The Writings of Samuel Adams - Volume 2Adams, Samuel
History
The Writings of Samuel Adams - Volume 2
Adams, Samuel
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1809
A General Assembly, when actuated with a becoming spirit of public
liberty against the attacks of arbitrary and despotic ministers,
appeared to be as disgustful to Gov. Bernard, as parliaments were to
James the first; with whom it was even an aphorism that the lords and
commons were two bad co-partners with a monarch: Having got rid of
such a troublesome assembly at least for one year, he was more at
leisure, in conjunction with the commissioners of the customs and his
other confederates, to attend to the plan which their hearts had been
long set upon, of introducing into the province a military power for
their aid. -Accordingly every little occurrence, which a man of sense
who had no political designs in view would not have thought worth his
notice such as frequently happen in the most orderly cities, was
gathered up with uncommon industry and made the subject of
representation to the ministry - He even descended so low as to give
lord Hillsborough a detail of the diversion of a few boys in the
street with a drum, which at no time is unusual in populous places,
and pictured it to his lordship, who, it seems gave it its full
weight, as a prelude to a designed insurrection, in which "persons of
all kinds, sexes and ages," were to bear their part - The common
amusements of children were construed rebellion, and his lordship had
minute accounts of them sent to him by this busy journalist, as
grounds upon which he might form measures of administration. But his
letters, together with those of general Gage and commodore Hood, and
the memorials, &c. of the commissioners of the customs, have already
been sufficiently animadverted upon-" No one, says the town of
Boston, in a pamphlet, entitled, An appeal to the World,2 can read
them without being astonished at seeing a person in so important a
department as governor Bernard sustained, descending in his letters
to a minister of state to such trifling circumstances and such
slanderous chit-chat: Boasting as he does in one of them of his
over-reaching those with whom he was transacting publick business;
and in order to prejudice the most respectable bodies, meanly
filching from individuals belonging to those bodies, what had been
drop'd in the course of business or debate: Journalizing every idle
report bro't to him, and in short acting the part of a pimp rather
than a governor." Sufficient however were they finally to prevail
upon administration, which had before been full ready eno' to employ
the military force in England, to order four regiments and part of a
fifth, for the preservation of the peace in the town of Boston. The
only disorders in the town that could give any colouring to measures
so severe, and not more severe than unjustifiable by the constitution,
happened on the 18th of March and 10th of June, 1768 - The first was
nothing more than the parading of the lower sort of people thro' the
streets at the close of an anniversary festivity; when no injury was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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