Groups of
extremists
in the various
1 Bos.
1 Bos.
Arthur Schlesinger - Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution
Admitting freely that the
merchants had held out longer than he had expected and
that his connection with them had been " but as an Auxiliary
in their Nonimportation Agreement," he wrote to a brother
radical in South Carolina in this strain:
Let the Colonies still convince their implacable Enemies that
they are united in constitutional Principles, and are resolved
they will not be Slaves; that their Dependance is not upon
Merchants or any particular Class of Men, nor is their dernier
resort a resolution barely to withhold Commerce with a nation
that would subject them to despotic Power. 1
In effect, he was saying that the merchant class had been
utilized to the utmost as fertilizers of discontent; that
their spirit for trade redress had sustained them surpris-
ingly well in their opposition to England but that hence-
forth the struggle of the colonies must be divorced from the
self-interest of the merchant class and rest on a broader
popular basis.
Adams labored hard to keep flUve radical sentiment in
Boston. James Ot1s, 1n his intervals of sanity, was pursu1ng
a strongly reactionary course. 2 John Adams withdrew him-
self from public life, devoting himself to his profession;
and for a time he ceased even to use his pen in defense of
popular rights. Sam Adams's chief care was to keep hot the
coals of Hancock's resentment against Parliament, for Han-
cock was the local Croesus,8 and some of his funds and all
'To Peter Timothy, Nov. 21, 1770; Adams, Writings (Gushing),
vol. ii, p. 65. Vide also ibid. , p. 58.
1 Adams, J. , Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 266.
? John Adams credited the statement that "not less than one thou-
sand families were, every day in the year, dependent on Mr. Hancock for
their daily bread. " Ibid. , vol. x, p. 260.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 255
of his influence had been employed to promote the anti-
parliamentary movement in the preceding years. But, as
was the case with many another merchant, Hancock's busi-
ness affairs had gone awry while he was playing the politi-
cian;' and he was averse to any further agitation by the
radicals while the golden fruits of commerce invited pick-
ing. "All friendship between them was suddenly at an end,"
wrote Hutchinson in his history, "and Mr. Hancock ex-
pressed his dissatisfaction with the party, and with their
extending their designs further than appeared to him war-
rantable. " 2 For the next couple of years, Hancock, al-
though resisting all efforts of Governor Hutchinson to com-
mit him to the other side, pursued the course of the typical
merchant, and at several critical times threw his influence
and vote in favor of conciliation and against the disturbing
schemes of Adams. *
What the radical cause lacked was, first, a compelling?
issue, and, second, an organization divorced from the con-
trol of the merchant class. The home government supplied
promising material for the first when the report reached
Boston in late September, 1 772, that the salar1es "oT^ the ,
Wf? uld thereafter be paid out of the
No propagandist ever utilized an opportunity more dexter-
ously than did Sam Adams on this occasionT Masquerad-
ing under the signature " Valerius Poplicola," he appeared
in the Boston Gazette of October 5, 1772 in an eloquent pro-
test against the innovation. "The Merchants of this Con-
tinent," he declared,
have passively submitted to the Indignity of a Tribute; and
1 Brown, John Hancock His Book, pp. 158, 163, 168.
1 Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 346. See also Wells, Samuel Adams, vol. i,
PP. 458, 459-
? Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, pp. 348, 356, 361; Wells, op. cit. , vol. i,
pp. 465-475-
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? 256 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Landholders, tho' Sharers in the Indignity, have been per-
haps too unconcern'd Spectators of the humiliating Scene. . . .
Had the Body of this People shown a proper Resentment, at
the time when the proud Taskmasters first made their appear-
ance, we should never have seen Pensioners multiplying like
the Locusts in Egypt. . . . Is it not High Time for the People
of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be
Freemen or Slaves ? . . . Let us . . . calmly look around us and
consider what is best to be done. . . . Let it be the topic of con-
versation in every social Club. Let every Town assemble.
Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to
consult and recover our just Rights. 1
With the radical program so outlined, Adams decided to
work out the plan through the agency of the town meeting.
Of these town meetings, Hutchinson had already written
several months earlier: they are {^constituted of the lowest
class of the people under the influence of a few of a higher
class, but of intemperate and furious dispositions and of
desperate fortunes. Men of property and of the best char-
acter have deserted these meetings, where they are sure of
being affronted. " 2J According to Adams' plan, a petition
for a town meeting was at once presented to the selectmen.
Hancock was a selectman and, with three or four others,
he unhesitatingly rejected the petition, disapproving of what
seemed to him precipitate measures. Other petitions were
then set on foot, and finally, after more than three weeks'
delay, the selectmen yielded to the pressure. 8 The meeting
1 Adams, S. , Writings (Cushing), vol. ii, pp. 332-337.
? This letter of Mch. 29, 1772 to Hillsborough continued: "By the
constitution ? 40 stg. , which they say may be in cloaths, household
furniture or any sort of property, is a qualification; and even with that
there is scarce ever any inquiry, and anything with the appearance of a
man is admitted without scrutiny. " Hosmer, Hutchinson, p. 231.
1Hutchinson, op. cit. , voL iii, pp. 361-362; Wells, op. cit. , vol. i, pp.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY
257
occurred on Wednesday, October 28, and two adjourned
sessions were needed to carry on an animated colloquy with
Governor Hutchinson over the question of the judges'
salaries. 1 Atlhe last meeting, on November 2, the temper
of the citizens had reached^ _the jgroger^pitch; Adams seized
the momffl* *n ^j-jrnduce a motion Jnr a standing committee
of correspondence with the purpose
state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in
particular . . . . to communicate and publish the same to the
several Towns in this Province and to the World as the sense
of this Town, with the Infringements and violations thereof
that have been or from time to time may be made; also request-
ing of each Town a free Communication of their Sentiments. *~J
The motion was carried unanimously.
Adams had succeeded in arousing the town meeting; he
had yet to convince the men who had been leaders in the
late agitation against the Townshend duties of the propriety
of his course. A number of these men, although asked to
serve on the committee, declined their appointments. Three
of the Boston representatives in the Assembly, Speaker
Cushing, Hancock and William Phillips, and three select-
men, Samuel Austin, John Scollay and Thomas Marshall,
all merchants, excused themselves, each alleging " his private
Business would not then admit of it. " At least three others
took a like step. * James Otis was induced to accept the
chairmanship. The twenty-one men who composed the
committee were the best who could be obtained under the
circumstances, and probably served Adams' purposes better
1 Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Nov. 2, 9, 1772.
1 Bos. Com. Cor. Mss. , vol. i, p. I; also Bos. Town Recs. (I77O-/777).
PP. 92-93.
* Benjamin Austin, Benjamin Kent and Samuel Swift. "Q. E. D. "
in Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Nov. 12, 1772.
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? 258 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763. 1776
than if the more weighty citizens had been persuaded to
sacrifice their private interests. Otis soon retired to the
madhouse; and the " Grand Incendiary of the Province " *
himself assumed the "chairmansh1p, a subst1tution which,
to Hutchinson's view, was probably little better than a
change from Philip drunk to Philip sober. In the commit-
tee as completed, the merchant element was in the minor-
ity; and the effective activity of the committee was largely
directed by the chairman. Hutchinson had as yet no sus-
picion that "the foulest, subtlest and most venomous ser-
pent that ever issued from the eggs of sedition " 2 was
growing before his eyes. "The restless faction," he wrote
jeeringly t6 England, were unable "to revive the old plan
of mobbing; and the only dependence left is to keep up a
correspondence through the Province by committees of the
several towns, which is such a foolish scheme that they must
necessarily make themselves ridiculous. " *
The plan began to yield fruit when the committee re-
ported to the town meeting on November 20 a cogently
reasorjfrl pnpnn "frititt" ^v Adams, which was unanimously
"""Tiff1 hV rhf tV|ree hundred men present. This docu-
ment revealed the consummate ability of the master agita-
tor. Frankly designed to arouse the public from their
lethargic sleep, the paper bristled with allusions to past irri-
tations and future perils; it gave to current abstractions a
practical application; it made bold appeals to the self-inter-
est of smuggling merchants and to the self-esteem of home-
manufacturing farmers; it pictured the dwindling sphere
1 Hutchinson's characterization of Adams; Wells, op. cit. , vol. i, p. 488.
1 The well known phrase of "Massachusettensis," in Mass: Gas. &
Pozt-Boy, Jan. a, 1775.
? Letter of Nov. 13, 1772 to Secretary Pownall; Hosroer, op. cit. ,
P. 235-
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY
259
of provincial self-government, and dangled the bogey of an
American episcopate. The lengthy " List of Infringements
& Violations of Rights " was presented in terms which could
be understood by the least imaginative. The revenue duty
on tea was represented as an entering wedge for other taxes
which might affect lands; the arbitrary powers of the cus-
toms officials with respect to searching vessels or houses for
smuggled goods were fully dilated upon; the presence of
"Fleets and Armies" for supporting "these unconstitu-
tional Officers in collecting and managing this unconstitu-
tional Revenue" was noted; the extension of the power of
the vice-admiralty courts was once more condemned; the
laws against slitting mills and the transportation of hats
and wool were cited as " an infringement of that right with
which God and nature have invested us. " Regarding the
payment of the governor's and judges' salaries, >>. e. of
"the men on whose opinions and decisions our properties
liberties and lives, in a great measure, depend," the divorcing
of these branches from popular control was deplored as fatal
to free government. References were also made to inter-
ferences in provincial home rule through the agency of royal
instructions, and to minor matters. 1
This document, which, according to Hutchinson, "was
calculated to strike the colonists with a sense of their just
cfiSn to independence, and to st1mulate them to assert u, *
was sent to all the towns in the province, wilH zTcircular
letter urging that they freely communicate their own senti-
ments and give appropriate instructions to their representa-
tives in the Assembly. The maneuver of Boston met with
immediate success.
Groups of extremists in the various
1 Bos. Town Recs. (1770-1777), pp. 94-108; also Adams, S. , Writings
(Gushing), vol. ii, pp. 35O-374-
* Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 366.
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? 26o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
localities engineered town meetings, which approved the
Boston resolutions or adopted others more radical, and ap-
pointed standing committees of correspondence composed of
radicals. In all, seventy-eight such meetings, mostly of
inland towns but including the ports of Plymouth, Marble-
head and Newburyport, were noted in the journals of the
Boston Committee of Correspondence or in the newspapers.
[Thus, all on a sudden, from a state of peace, order, and general
contentment, as some expressed themselves, the province, more
or less from one end to the other, was brought into a state of
contention, disorder and general dissatisfaction; or, as others
would have it, were aroused from stupor and inaction, to sen-
sibility and activity. 1""]
The merchants as a class continued to hold aloof from the
organized popular clamor. 2 When the Assembly met in
January, 1773, Governor Hutchinson, now keenly alive to
the danger, denounced the committee of correspondence sys-
tem as unwarrantable and of dangerous tendency, and asked
the body to join him in discountenancing such innovations. *
This unwise action produced a storm of messages and re-
plies that, for the time, fanned higher the flame which was
already beginning to die for lack of fuel.
Indeed the weakness of Adams' plan was that the mani-
festo of the Boston town meeting was largely a recitation
of old grievances, and the leading new issue could scarcely
1 Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, p. 370 n. Not* some of the extravagant
protests against "these mighty grievances and intolerable wrongs," so
freshly discovered! Ibid. , pp. 369-370 n.
1 It is significant that Salem failed to take action, and that twenty-
nine of substance and character at Marblehead expressed their "entire
disapprobation. " Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 28, 1772; Adams, S. ,
Writings (Cushing), vol. ii, p. 350. The little town of Weston refused
to appoint a committee by a large vote.
1Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, pp. 370-390; Hosmer, op. cit. , pp. 396
ct seq.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 26l
be an enduring one to a people who had been complaining
for generations against the burden of paying high salaries
to governors and judges. Moreover, the radical propaganda
had not yet advanced to a stage where it could be sustained
without the support of the merchant class. Adams, how-
ever, had an abiding faith in the efficacy of a campaign of
education and agitation, and in the establishment of a popu-
lar organization which would be ready for action when the
time should arrive.
The matter of salaries was in form a local issue, and
was not likely to stir the people of other provinces to the
point of organization. However, the radicals of the Vir-
ginia House of Burgesses, in March, 1773, seized the op-
portunity to establish a single committee of correspondence
for the whole province, when news reached them that a
royal commission of inquiry of large powers had been ap-
pointed to investigate the Gaspce affair. This committee
composed almost entirely of radical planters, was empowered
"to obtain the most early and authentic intelligence of all
such acts and resolutions of the British parliament, or pro-
ceedings of administration, as may relate to or affect the
British colonies in America," and to carry on a correspond-
ence with the sister provinces respecting these matters. 1
On April 10, 1773, Adams wrote to a member of the Vir-
ginia committee, urging the establishment of municipal com-
mittees of correspondence in every province;2 but he did
not understand, as they did, that political leadership in Vir-
ginia was held by the planting class and that the few urban
centres were dominated by the narrow views of merchants
and factors. The Virginia type of committee became at
1 Frothingham, Rise of Republic, pp. 279-281. Collins, E. D. , "Com-
mittees of Correspondence of the American Revolution," Am. Hist.
Assn. Rep. (1901), vol. i, pp. 243-271, is important in this connection.
1 To R. H. Lee; Writings (Cushing), vol. iii, p. 26.
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? 262 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
once the popular plan of organization among the radicals;
and by July, 1773, five assemblies had followed the lead of
that province. 1 It was not until Great Britain adopted meas-
ures which affected all provinces alike and which aroused the
powerful merchant class once more to protest that the or-
ganization of committees in local subdivisions throughout
the continent was made possible. After July, 1773, the
flurry of discontent stirred up by the radicals of Massachu-
setts and Virginia quickly subsided. 2 The mercantile and
conservative classes had made their influence felt once more.
General apathy again reigned.
As destiny would have itf Lord North, not S^m Adams.
was responsible for thp ahrnpf. determinat1on of the mer-
chantcla&s_^o_&il UP cudgels ^1113. 111 in n str11inilc or com-
i" r*"> *>>" nf Tf"f\. It was the enactment
in Mayr 1773. that caused the
JJS winflg 3Tlfl tr>. g^plf again
jjke the^garlier
tea legislation, this act was designed to accomplish a double
purpose : to help the East India Company to sell their surplus
tfia^stock, amounting to seventeen million pounds; anoto
enforcgjho. <rJlg^ion_2fJjhf p*1"1*^ . . . . . '1'"J l'"t,1n America. 1
1 R. I. , Conn. , N. H. , Mass. , S. C. A second group of assemblies
acted from September, 1773, to February, 1774: Ga. , Md. , Del. , N. Y. ,
N. J. Vide Collins's article, loc. cit. There seemed to be little or no
connection between the later movement and the agitation against the
East India Company which was developing concurrently.
1 For one thing, the commission to investigate the Gaspee affair had
failed to exercise any of their extraordinary powers.
1 With reference to the second purpose, the revenue arising from all
d1e various duties in America during 1772 had yielded a balance of less
than ? 85 above d1e expenses of collection, not counting the cost of main-
taining ships-of-war for the suppression of smuggling. Franklin, Writ-
ings (Smyth), vol. v, p. 460; vol. vi, pp. 2-3. Under the circumstances,
it was cheaper for the home government to adopt some expedient for
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 263
The act of 1773 involved no new infringement of the con-
stitutional or natural rights of the Americans, so far as the
taxation principle was concerned. Continuing the three-
penny import duty in America, the act provided that, in place
of a partial refund, a full drawback of English import duties
should be given on all teas re-shipped to America, thus re-
storing the arrangement which had existed under the Towns-
hend Act save that the company were not to be liable for
deficiencies in the revenue. The radical innovation was in-
troduced in the provision which empowered the East India
Company, if they so chose, to export tea to America or
to " foreign parts " from their warehouses and on their own
account, upon obtaining a license from the commissioners of
the treasury. 1
In other words. lthe East India Company, which hitherto
had been required by law to sell their teas at public auction
to merchants for exportation, were now authorized to be-
come their own exporters and to establish branch houses in
America. This arrangement swept away, by one stroke,
the English merchant who purchased the tea at the com-
pany's auction and the American merchant who bought it
of the English merchant; for the East India Company, by
dealing directly with the American retailer, eliminated all
the profits which ordinarily accumulated in the passage of
the tea through the hands of the middlemen! From another
point of view, as Joseph Galloway has pointed out,
the consumer of tea in America was obliged to pay only one
carrying out Hutchinson's oft-repeated suggestion of sinking the selling
price of tea. The particular method adopted had already been suggested
by Samuel Wharton in London and Gilbert Barkly, the Philadelphia
merchant, and by others. Pa. Mag. , vol. xxv, pp. 139-141; Drake, op. cit. ,
pp. 199-202.
1 13 George III, c. 44. Such exportation was to be permitted only
when the supp'y of tea in the company's warehouses amounted to at
least 10,000,000 pounds.
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? 264 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
profit to the Company, another to the shopkeeper. But before
the act, they usually paid a profit to the Company, to the London
merchant, who bought it of the Company and sold it to the
American merchant, and also to the American merchant, be-
sides the profit of the retailer. So that, by this act, the con-
sumer of this necessary and common article of subsistence
was enabled to purchase it at one-half of its usual price . . . *
The colonial merchant class saw at once that the new act,
if permitted to go into effect, would enable the American
consumer to buy dutied teas, imported directly by the East
India Company, at a cheaper rate than dutied teas imported
in the customary manner by private merchants or than
Dutch teas introduced by the illicit traders. Therefore,
when the colonial press announced in September, 1773, that
the East India Company had been licensed to export more
than half a million pounds of tea to the four leading ports
of America, an alliance of powerful interests at once ap-
peared in opposition to the company's shipments.
As Governor Hutchinson at Boston put it in a letter of
January 2, 1774:
Our liberty men had lost their reputation with Philadelphia
and New York, having been importers of Teas from England
for three or four Years past notwithstanding the engagement
they had entrd into to the contrary. As soon as the news
came of the intended exportation of Teas [by the] E. I. Com-
pany which must of course put an end to all Trade in Teas by
private Merchants, proposals were made both to Philadelphia
and York for a new Union, and they were readily accepted, for
although no Teas had been imported from England at either of
those places, yet an immense profit had been made by the Im-
portation from Holland, which wou'd entirely cease if the Teas
1 Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Pro-
gress of the American Rebellion (London, 1780), pp. 17-18. For similar
statements, vide also "Z" in Boston Eve. Post, Oct . 25, 1773, and
"Massachusettensis" in Mass. Gasette and Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 265
from the E. I. Company should be admitted. This was the
consideration which engaged all the merchants. 1
An extended controversy began in newspaper and broad-
side, which not only revealed the fundamental antagonism
between the undertaking of the British trading corporation
and the interest of the colonial tea merchants, but also
pointed out the far-reaching menace which the new act held
for American merchants in general. To broaden the basis
of the popular protest, the old theoretical arguments against
the taxing author1ty ot Parl1ament were exhumed; and new
ana bizarre arguments were 1nvented. ""
"An examination of the propagandist literature and of a
few private letters will bear out this preliminary analysis.
Most of the writings against the tea shipments issued from
the presses of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and, with
varying emphasis, covered substantially the same ground.
merchants had held out longer than he had expected and
that his connection with them had been " but as an Auxiliary
in their Nonimportation Agreement," he wrote to a brother
radical in South Carolina in this strain:
Let the Colonies still convince their implacable Enemies that
they are united in constitutional Principles, and are resolved
they will not be Slaves; that their Dependance is not upon
Merchants or any particular Class of Men, nor is their dernier
resort a resolution barely to withhold Commerce with a nation
that would subject them to despotic Power. 1
In effect, he was saying that the merchant class had been
utilized to the utmost as fertilizers of discontent; that
their spirit for trade redress had sustained them surpris-
ingly well in their opposition to England but that hence-
forth the struggle of the colonies must be divorced from the
self-interest of the merchant class and rest on a broader
popular basis.
Adams labored hard to keep flUve radical sentiment in
Boston. James Ot1s, 1n his intervals of sanity, was pursu1ng
a strongly reactionary course. 2 John Adams withdrew him-
self from public life, devoting himself to his profession;
and for a time he ceased even to use his pen in defense of
popular rights. Sam Adams's chief care was to keep hot the
coals of Hancock's resentment against Parliament, for Han-
cock was the local Croesus,8 and some of his funds and all
'To Peter Timothy, Nov. 21, 1770; Adams, Writings (Gushing),
vol. ii, p. 65. Vide also ibid. , p. 58.
1 Adams, J. , Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 266.
? John Adams credited the statement that "not less than one thou-
sand families were, every day in the year, dependent on Mr. Hancock for
their daily bread. " Ibid. , vol. x, p. 260.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 255
of his influence had been employed to promote the anti-
parliamentary movement in the preceding years. But, as
was the case with many another merchant, Hancock's busi-
ness affairs had gone awry while he was playing the politi-
cian;' and he was averse to any further agitation by the
radicals while the golden fruits of commerce invited pick-
ing. "All friendship between them was suddenly at an end,"
wrote Hutchinson in his history, "and Mr. Hancock ex-
pressed his dissatisfaction with the party, and with their
extending their designs further than appeared to him war-
rantable. " 2 For the next couple of years, Hancock, al-
though resisting all efforts of Governor Hutchinson to com-
mit him to the other side, pursued the course of the typical
merchant, and at several critical times threw his influence
and vote in favor of conciliation and against the disturbing
schemes of Adams. *
What the radical cause lacked was, first, a compelling?
issue, and, second, an organization divorced from the con-
trol of the merchant class. The home government supplied
promising material for the first when the report reached
Boston in late September, 1 772, that the salar1es "oT^ the ,
Wf? uld thereafter be paid out of the
No propagandist ever utilized an opportunity more dexter-
ously than did Sam Adams on this occasionT Masquerad-
ing under the signature " Valerius Poplicola," he appeared
in the Boston Gazette of October 5, 1772 in an eloquent pro-
test against the innovation. "The Merchants of this Con-
tinent," he declared,
have passively submitted to the Indignity of a Tribute; and
1 Brown, John Hancock His Book, pp. 158, 163, 168.
1 Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 346. See also Wells, Samuel Adams, vol. i,
PP. 458, 459-
? Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, pp. 348, 356, 361; Wells, op. cit. , vol. i,
pp. 465-475-
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? 256 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Landholders, tho' Sharers in the Indignity, have been per-
haps too unconcern'd Spectators of the humiliating Scene. . . .
Had the Body of this People shown a proper Resentment, at
the time when the proud Taskmasters first made their appear-
ance, we should never have seen Pensioners multiplying like
the Locusts in Egypt. . . . Is it not High Time for the People
of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be
Freemen or Slaves ? . . . Let us . . . calmly look around us and
consider what is best to be done. . . . Let it be the topic of con-
versation in every social Club. Let every Town assemble.
Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to
consult and recover our just Rights. 1
With the radical program so outlined, Adams decided to
work out the plan through the agency of the town meeting.
Of these town meetings, Hutchinson had already written
several months earlier: they are {^constituted of the lowest
class of the people under the influence of a few of a higher
class, but of intemperate and furious dispositions and of
desperate fortunes. Men of property and of the best char-
acter have deserted these meetings, where they are sure of
being affronted. " 2J According to Adams' plan, a petition
for a town meeting was at once presented to the selectmen.
Hancock was a selectman and, with three or four others,
he unhesitatingly rejected the petition, disapproving of what
seemed to him precipitate measures. Other petitions were
then set on foot, and finally, after more than three weeks'
delay, the selectmen yielded to the pressure. 8 The meeting
1 Adams, S. , Writings (Cushing), vol. ii, pp. 332-337.
? This letter of Mch. 29, 1772 to Hillsborough continued: "By the
constitution ? 40 stg. , which they say may be in cloaths, household
furniture or any sort of property, is a qualification; and even with that
there is scarce ever any inquiry, and anything with the appearance of a
man is admitted without scrutiny. " Hosmer, Hutchinson, p. 231.
1Hutchinson, op. cit. , voL iii, pp. 361-362; Wells, op. cit. , vol. i, pp.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY
257
occurred on Wednesday, October 28, and two adjourned
sessions were needed to carry on an animated colloquy with
Governor Hutchinson over the question of the judges'
salaries. 1 Atlhe last meeting, on November 2, the temper
of the citizens had reached^ _the jgroger^pitch; Adams seized
the momffl* *n ^j-jrnduce a motion Jnr a standing committee
of correspondence with the purpose
state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in
particular . . . . to communicate and publish the same to the
several Towns in this Province and to the World as the sense
of this Town, with the Infringements and violations thereof
that have been or from time to time may be made; also request-
ing of each Town a free Communication of their Sentiments. *~J
The motion was carried unanimously.
Adams had succeeded in arousing the town meeting; he
had yet to convince the men who had been leaders in the
late agitation against the Townshend duties of the propriety
of his course. A number of these men, although asked to
serve on the committee, declined their appointments. Three
of the Boston representatives in the Assembly, Speaker
Cushing, Hancock and William Phillips, and three select-
men, Samuel Austin, John Scollay and Thomas Marshall,
all merchants, excused themselves, each alleging " his private
Business would not then admit of it. " At least three others
took a like step. * James Otis was induced to accept the
chairmanship. The twenty-one men who composed the
committee were the best who could be obtained under the
circumstances, and probably served Adams' purposes better
1 Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Nov. 2, 9, 1772.
1 Bos. Com. Cor. Mss. , vol. i, p. I; also Bos. Town Recs. (I77O-/777).
PP. 92-93.
* Benjamin Austin, Benjamin Kent and Samuel Swift. "Q. E. D. "
in Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Nov. 12, 1772.
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? 258 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763. 1776
than if the more weighty citizens had been persuaded to
sacrifice their private interests. Otis soon retired to the
madhouse; and the " Grand Incendiary of the Province " *
himself assumed the "chairmansh1p, a subst1tution which,
to Hutchinson's view, was probably little better than a
change from Philip drunk to Philip sober. In the commit-
tee as completed, the merchant element was in the minor-
ity; and the effective activity of the committee was largely
directed by the chairman. Hutchinson had as yet no sus-
picion that "the foulest, subtlest and most venomous ser-
pent that ever issued from the eggs of sedition " 2 was
growing before his eyes. "The restless faction," he wrote
jeeringly t6 England, were unable "to revive the old plan
of mobbing; and the only dependence left is to keep up a
correspondence through the Province by committees of the
several towns, which is such a foolish scheme that they must
necessarily make themselves ridiculous. " *
The plan began to yield fruit when the committee re-
ported to the town meeting on November 20 a cogently
reasorjfrl pnpnn "frititt" ^v Adams, which was unanimously
"""Tiff1 hV rhf tV|ree hundred men present. This docu-
ment revealed the consummate ability of the master agita-
tor. Frankly designed to arouse the public from their
lethargic sleep, the paper bristled with allusions to past irri-
tations and future perils; it gave to current abstractions a
practical application; it made bold appeals to the self-inter-
est of smuggling merchants and to the self-esteem of home-
manufacturing farmers; it pictured the dwindling sphere
1 Hutchinson's characterization of Adams; Wells, op. cit. , vol. i, p. 488.
1 The well known phrase of "Massachusettensis," in Mass: Gas. &
Pozt-Boy, Jan. a, 1775.
? Letter of Nov. 13, 1772 to Secretary Pownall; Hosroer, op. cit. ,
P. 235-
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY
259
of provincial self-government, and dangled the bogey of an
American episcopate. The lengthy " List of Infringements
& Violations of Rights " was presented in terms which could
be understood by the least imaginative. The revenue duty
on tea was represented as an entering wedge for other taxes
which might affect lands; the arbitrary powers of the cus-
toms officials with respect to searching vessels or houses for
smuggled goods were fully dilated upon; the presence of
"Fleets and Armies" for supporting "these unconstitu-
tional Officers in collecting and managing this unconstitu-
tional Revenue" was noted; the extension of the power of
the vice-admiralty courts was once more condemned; the
laws against slitting mills and the transportation of hats
and wool were cited as " an infringement of that right with
which God and nature have invested us. " Regarding the
payment of the governor's and judges' salaries, >>. e. of
"the men on whose opinions and decisions our properties
liberties and lives, in a great measure, depend," the divorcing
of these branches from popular control was deplored as fatal
to free government. References were also made to inter-
ferences in provincial home rule through the agency of royal
instructions, and to minor matters. 1
This document, which, according to Hutchinson, "was
calculated to strike the colonists with a sense of their just
cfiSn to independence, and to st1mulate them to assert u, *
was sent to all the towns in the province, wilH zTcircular
letter urging that they freely communicate their own senti-
ments and give appropriate instructions to their representa-
tives in the Assembly. The maneuver of Boston met with
immediate success.
Groups of extremists in the various
1 Bos. Town Recs. (1770-1777), pp. 94-108; also Adams, S. , Writings
(Gushing), vol. ii, pp. 35O-374-
* Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 366.
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? 26o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
localities engineered town meetings, which approved the
Boston resolutions or adopted others more radical, and ap-
pointed standing committees of correspondence composed of
radicals. In all, seventy-eight such meetings, mostly of
inland towns but including the ports of Plymouth, Marble-
head and Newburyport, were noted in the journals of the
Boston Committee of Correspondence or in the newspapers.
[Thus, all on a sudden, from a state of peace, order, and general
contentment, as some expressed themselves, the province, more
or less from one end to the other, was brought into a state of
contention, disorder and general dissatisfaction; or, as others
would have it, were aroused from stupor and inaction, to sen-
sibility and activity. 1""]
The merchants as a class continued to hold aloof from the
organized popular clamor. 2 When the Assembly met in
January, 1773, Governor Hutchinson, now keenly alive to
the danger, denounced the committee of correspondence sys-
tem as unwarrantable and of dangerous tendency, and asked
the body to join him in discountenancing such innovations. *
This unwise action produced a storm of messages and re-
plies that, for the time, fanned higher the flame which was
already beginning to die for lack of fuel.
Indeed the weakness of Adams' plan was that the mani-
festo of the Boston town meeting was largely a recitation
of old grievances, and the leading new issue could scarcely
1 Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, p. 370 n. Not* some of the extravagant
protests against "these mighty grievances and intolerable wrongs," so
freshly discovered! Ibid. , pp. 369-370 n.
1 It is significant that Salem failed to take action, and that twenty-
nine of substance and character at Marblehead expressed their "entire
disapprobation. " Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 28, 1772; Adams, S. ,
Writings (Cushing), vol. ii, p. 350. The little town of Weston refused
to appoint a committee by a large vote.
1Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, pp. 370-390; Hosmer, op. cit. , pp. 396
ct seq.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 26l
be an enduring one to a people who had been complaining
for generations against the burden of paying high salaries
to governors and judges. Moreover, the radical propaganda
had not yet advanced to a stage where it could be sustained
without the support of the merchant class. Adams, how-
ever, had an abiding faith in the efficacy of a campaign of
education and agitation, and in the establishment of a popu-
lar organization which would be ready for action when the
time should arrive.
The matter of salaries was in form a local issue, and
was not likely to stir the people of other provinces to the
point of organization. However, the radicals of the Vir-
ginia House of Burgesses, in March, 1773, seized the op-
portunity to establish a single committee of correspondence
for the whole province, when news reached them that a
royal commission of inquiry of large powers had been ap-
pointed to investigate the Gaspce affair. This committee
composed almost entirely of radical planters, was empowered
"to obtain the most early and authentic intelligence of all
such acts and resolutions of the British parliament, or pro-
ceedings of administration, as may relate to or affect the
British colonies in America," and to carry on a correspond-
ence with the sister provinces respecting these matters. 1
On April 10, 1773, Adams wrote to a member of the Vir-
ginia committee, urging the establishment of municipal com-
mittees of correspondence in every province;2 but he did
not understand, as they did, that political leadership in Vir-
ginia was held by the planting class and that the few urban
centres were dominated by the narrow views of merchants
and factors. The Virginia type of committee became at
1 Frothingham, Rise of Republic, pp. 279-281. Collins, E. D. , "Com-
mittees of Correspondence of the American Revolution," Am. Hist.
Assn. Rep. (1901), vol. i, pp. 243-271, is important in this connection.
1 To R. H. Lee; Writings (Cushing), vol. iii, p. 26.
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? 262 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
once the popular plan of organization among the radicals;
and by July, 1773, five assemblies had followed the lead of
that province. 1 It was not until Great Britain adopted meas-
ures which affected all provinces alike and which aroused the
powerful merchant class once more to protest that the or-
ganization of committees in local subdivisions throughout
the continent was made possible. After July, 1773, the
flurry of discontent stirred up by the radicals of Massachu-
setts and Virginia quickly subsided. 2 The mercantile and
conservative classes had made their influence felt once more.
General apathy again reigned.
As destiny would have itf Lord North, not S^m Adams.
was responsible for thp ahrnpf. determinat1on of the mer-
chantcla&s_^o_&il UP cudgels ^1113. 111 in n str11inilc or com-
i" r*"> *>>" nf Tf"f\. It was the enactment
in Mayr 1773. that caused the
JJS winflg 3Tlfl tr>. g^plf again
jjke the^garlier
tea legislation, this act was designed to accomplish a double
purpose : to help the East India Company to sell their surplus
tfia^stock, amounting to seventeen million pounds; anoto
enforcgjho. <rJlg^ion_2fJjhf p*1"1*^ . . . . . '1'"J l'"t,1n America. 1
1 R. I. , Conn. , N. H. , Mass. , S. C. A second group of assemblies
acted from September, 1773, to February, 1774: Ga. , Md. , Del. , N. Y. ,
N. J. Vide Collins's article, loc. cit. There seemed to be little or no
connection between the later movement and the agitation against the
East India Company which was developing concurrently.
1 For one thing, the commission to investigate the Gaspee affair had
failed to exercise any of their extraordinary powers.
1 With reference to the second purpose, the revenue arising from all
d1e various duties in America during 1772 had yielded a balance of less
than ? 85 above d1e expenses of collection, not counting the cost of main-
taining ships-of-war for the suppression of smuggling. Franklin, Writ-
ings (Smyth), vol. v, p. 460; vol. vi, pp. 2-3. Under the circumstances,
it was cheaper for the home government to adopt some expedient for
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 263
The act of 1773 involved no new infringement of the con-
stitutional or natural rights of the Americans, so far as the
taxation principle was concerned. Continuing the three-
penny import duty in America, the act provided that, in place
of a partial refund, a full drawback of English import duties
should be given on all teas re-shipped to America, thus re-
storing the arrangement which had existed under the Towns-
hend Act save that the company were not to be liable for
deficiencies in the revenue. The radical innovation was in-
troduced in the provision which empowered the East India
Company, if they so chose, to export tea to America or
to " foreign parts " from their warehouses and on their own
account, upon obtaining a license from the commissioners of
the treasury. 1
In other words. lthe East India Company, which hitherto
had been required by law to sell their teas at public auction
to merchants for exportation, were now authorized to be-
come their own exporters and to establish branch houses in
America. This arrangement swept away, by one stroke,
the English merchant who purchased the tea at the com-
pany's auction and the American merchant who bought it
of the English merchant; for the East India Company, by
dealing directly with the American retailer, eliminated all
the profits which ordinarily accumulated in the passage of
the tea through the hands of the middlemen! From another
point of view, as Joseph Galloway has pointed out,
the consumer of tea in America was obliged to pay only one
carrying out Hutchinson's oft-repeated suggestion of sinking the selling
price of tea. The particular method adopted had already been suggested
by Samuel Wharton in London and Gilbert Barkly, the Philadelphia
merchant, and by others. Pa. Mag. , vol. xxv, pp. 139-141; Drake, op. cit. ,
pp. 199-202.
1 13 George III, c. 44. Such exportation was to be permitted only
when the supp'y of tea in the company's warehouses amounted to at
least 10,000,000 pounds.
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? 264 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
profit to the Company, another to the shopkeeper. But before
the act, they usually paid a profit to the Company, to the London
merchant, who bought it of the Company and sold it to the
American merchant, and also to the American merchant, be-
sides the profit of the retailer. So that, by this act, the con-
sumer of this necessary and common article of subsistence
was enabled to purchase it at one-half of its usual price . . . *
The colonial merchant class saw at once that the new act,
if permitted to go into effect, would enable the American
consumer to buy dutied teas, imported directly by the East
India Company, at a cheaper rate than dutied teas imported
in the customary manner by private merchants or than
Dutch teas introduced by the illicit traders. Therefore,
when the colonial press announced in September, 1773, that
the East India Company had been licensed to export more
than half a million pounds of tea to the four leading ports
of America, an alliance of powerful interests at once ap-
peared in opposition to the company's shipments.
As Governor Hutchinson at Boston put it in a letter of
January 2, 1774:
Our liberty men had lost their reputation with Philadelphia
and New York, having been importers of Teas from England
for three or four Years past notwithstanding the engagement
they had entrd into to the contrary. As soon as the news
came of the intended exportation of Teas [by the] E. I. Com-
pany which must of course put an end to all Trade in Teas by
private Merchants, proposals were made both to Philadelphia
and York for a new Union, and they were readily accepted, for
although no Teas had been imported from England at either of
those places, yet an immense profit had been made by the Im-
portation from Holland, which wou'd entirely cease if the Teas
1 Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Pro-
gress of the American Rebellion (London, 1780), pp. 17-18. For similar
statements, vide also "Z" in Boston Eve. Post, Oct . 25, 1773, and
"Massachusettensis" in Mass. Gasette and Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
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? COLONIAL PROSPERITY 265
from the E. I. Company should be admitted. This was the
consideration which engaged all the merchants. 1
An extended controversy began in newspaper and broad-
side, which not only revealed the fundamental antagonism
between the undertaking of the British trading corporation
and the interest of the colonial tea merchants, but also
pointed out the far-reaching menace which the new act held
for American merchants in general. To broaden the basis
of the popular protest, the old theoretical arguments against
the taxing author1ty ot Parl1ament were exhumed; and new
ana bizarre arguments were 1nvented. ""
"An examination of the propagandist literature and of a
few private letters will bear out this preliminary analysis.
Most of the writings against the tea shipments issued from
the presses of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and, with
varying emphasis, covered substantially the same ground.
