The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Science
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
regarded as disloyal; and hence Lord Hillsborough's instructions to
Governor Bernard ran,--"If any man or set of men have been daring
enough to declare openly that they will not submit to the authority of
Parliament, it is of great consequence that His Majesty's servants
should know who and what they are."
Another class of British observers, already referred to, of the school
of Sidney and Milton, lovers of civil and religious liberty, saw in
Boston and Massachusetts a state of things far removed from rebellion
and anarchy. They looked upon the spectacle of a people in general
raised by mental and moral culture into fitness for self-government
and an appreciation of the higher aims of life, as a result at which
good men the world over ought to rejoice, a result honorable to the
common humanity. They pronounced the late Parliamentary acts affecting
such a people to be grievances, the course of the Ministry towards
them to be oppressive, and the claims set forth in their proceedings
to be reasonable; they even went so far as to say that the equity was
wholly on the side of the North-Americans. Thus this class, as they
rose above a selfish jealousy of political power, fairly anticipated
the verdict of posterity. Thomas Hollis, the worthy benefactor of
Harvard College, was a type of this republican school. "The people of
Boston and of Massachusetts Bay," he wrote in 1768, "are, I suppose,
take them as a body, the soberest, most knowing, virtuous people, at
this time, upon earth. All of them hold Revolution principles, and
were to a man, till disgusted by the Stamp Act, the stanchest friends
to the House of Hanover and subjects of King George III."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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