A HUMILIATING POSITION

33

time on the side of the loyalists might have turned the scale.

Thomas Bernard believes that by this exercise of the veto -repeated as it was on subsequent occasions-his father postponed the defection of the Council for nearly three years. Whenever the citadel of government,' as Francis Bernard was wont to style the Council Board, fell into revolutionary hands, the post of Governor must become untenable. This is what eventually happened; the Governor's resolute conduct only protracted the struggle.

He suffered in this contest. He was deprived of his staunchest allies and advisers, and especially hampered by the exclusion of the Lieutenant-Governor, who ought to have been cognisant of every wave of debate, since he might at any moment have to preside over the Council in consequence of the death, retirement, or temporary absence of the Governor. Mr. Bernard therefore insisted on keeping Mr. Hutchinson in the room during the meetings of the Board, even though he could not take part in the discussions. Meanwhile Bowdoin, one of the newly elected councillors, became Chairman of Committees in his stead, and worked for the benefit of the popular party in the House. This position was sufficiently humiliating for both Bernard and Hutchinson; nevertheless, the Opposition regarded the Lieutenant-Governor's presence in the Council-room with indignation, as an affront to its own supremacy.

Samuel Adams is described by Hosmer as the real leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives. By his influence he had introduced several new members, and he had subjugated many. Thomas Cushing, the Speakerson of a merchant in whose house Adams had been for a short time—was, according to the same writer, 'an honourable but not especially significant man among the patriots, who, through the fact that he was figure-head of the House, was sometimes credited in England and among the other colonists with an importance which he never really possessed.'

VOL. II.

D

At this period, it is evident that the views of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor often diverged. This is not surprising, as the one had been reared and had lived till within the last few years in England, while the other had not spent more than a period of some months out of America.

Hutchinson says that some of the Council thought it unadvisable to challenge the election of James Otis to the Speakership, and he was apparently one of those who opposed the measure, to which he attributed the determination of the popular party to exclude the officials from the new Council. The temperament of Otis, however, rendered it hopeless to expect from him that impartiality which should be the distinguishing mark of a 'Speaker.' Indeed, such was his state of mind that some unseemly outburst might at any moment be anticipated, even against the Crown and Government of England, which would lead to great embarrassment and mischief.

Dr. Gordon, an admirer of the American nationalists, notes the previous conduct of Otis to Oxenbridge Thacher. The deceased belonged to the band of patriots; but when he happened to think differently from Mr. Otis, Junr. in the House of Assembly, the latter treated him in so overbearing and indecent a manner that he was obliged at times to call upon the Speaker to interpose and protect him.' The same writer attributes the subsequent troubles of Mr. Otis to 'the strength of his passions and a failure in the point of temperance."

2

Of Mr. Bernard's rejection of the six councillors the Lieutenant-Governor writes:

Governors, to avoid giving offence, had, from disuse, almost lost their right of negativing the Council. The House had kept up their right by constant use, though never by making so great a change at once, except in one instance, at the time of the Landbank. He had now made a very proper use of his authority, and

1 Hutchinson, Hist. Mass., ch. ii.

2 Gordon (William, D.D.), History of the Rise, Progress and Establish ment of the Independence of the United States of America, Letter IV.

THE GOVERNOR'S VETO

35

had furnished a good precedent for future use. stop here.

But he did not

Mr. Bernard, indeed, blamed the conduct of those who had excluded the functionaries as being an attack on Government in form, with a professed intention to deprive it of its best and most able servants, whose only crime was their fidelity to the Crown.' This Mr. Hutchinson considered to be giving the House an advantage. Its answer was certainly couched in insulting terms, which might be accounted for by the feeling that its members had received a check through having the real drift of their measures publicly exposed. In return they vindicated their own conduct, and, alluding to the Governor's expressions,

they enquired 'what oppugnation they had been guilty of; they had given their suffrages according to the dictates of their consciences and the best light of their understandings; they had a right to choose, and he had a right to disapprove without assigning any reason; he had thought fit to disapprove of some; they were far from suggesting that the country had by that means been deprived of the best and ablest of its servants.' They say, with a sneer, they had released the judges from the cares and perplexities of politicks, and given them opportunity to make still further advances in the knowledge of the law; they had left other gentlemen more at leisure to discharge the duties and functions of their important offices; this surely was not to deprive the Government of its best and ablest servants, nor could it be called the oppugnation of anything but of a dangerous union of legislative and executive powers in the same persons.'

The sarcasm was, of course, intended for Mr. Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Justice.

A day or two after the Governor's speech he received a letter from General the Hon. Henry Conway, Secretary of State, which he laid before the House, adding some observations of his own. The Secretary's letter is as follows:

Sir, Herewith I have the pleasure of transmitting to you the copy of the two Acts of Parliament just passed; the first, for securing the just dependency of the Colonies on the Mother

Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. ch. ii.

Country; the second, for the repeal of the Act of the last Session granting certain stamp duties in America.1

He adds that a third Act, of Indemnity, will probably soon be made known in the colony, and continues:

The moderation, the forbearance, the unexampled lenity and tenderness of Parliament towards the colonies, which are SO signally displayed in those Acts, cannot but dispose the province committed to your care to the return of cheerful obedience to the laws and legislative authority of Great Britain, and to those sentiments of respectful gratitude to the Mother Country which are the natural, and, I trust, will be the certain effects of much grace and condescension, so remarkably manifested on the part of his Majesty and of the Parliament. . . . You would think it scarce possible, I imagine, that the paternal care of his Majesty for his colonies, or the lenity and indulgence of the Parliament, should go further than I have already mentioned; yet so full of true magnanimity are the sentiments of both, and so free from the smallest colour of passion or prejudice, that they seem not only disposed to forgive, but to forget those most undeniable marks of an undutiful disposition, too frequent in the late transactions of the colonies, and which, for the honour of these colonies, it were to be wished, had been more discountenanced and discouraged by those who had knowledge to conduct themselves otherwise.

Nothing will tend more effectually to every conciliating purpose, and there is nothing, therefore, I have in command more earnestly to require of you, than that you should exert yourself earnestly in recommending it strongly to the Assembly that full and ample compensation be made to those who, from the madness of the people, have suffered for their deference to the Act of the British Legislature. And you will be particularly attentive that such persons be effectually secured from any further insult, and that, as far as in you lies, you will take care, by your example and influence, that they may be treated with that respect to their persons, and that justice and regard to all their pretensions, which their merits and sufferings undoubtedly claim. . . . I must mention the one circumstance in particular that should recommend those unhappy people whom the outrage of the populace has driven from America to the affection of all that country;

Belsham, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., vol. ii., Appendix, 'Letter from Mr. Secretary Conway to Francis Bernard, Esqre., Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, A.D. 1766.'

THE WHIGS OF BOSTON

37

which is, that unprovoked by the injuries they had suffered to a forgetfulness of what they owed to truth and their country, they gave their testimonies with knowledge, but without passion or prejudice; and those testimonies had, I believe, great weight in persuading the repeal of the Stamp Act.

I have only to add, which I do with great pleasure, that every part of your conduct has had the entire and hearty approbation of your Sovereign; and that the judicious representations in favour of your province, which appear in your letters, laid before both Houses of Parliament, seem to have their full weight in all those parts of the American interests to which they relate. And as his Majesty honours you with his fullest approbation both for the firmness and temperance of your conduct, so I hope your province will cordially feel what they owe to the Governor, whom no outrage could provoke to resentment, nor any insult induce to relax in his endeavours to persuade his Majesty to show his indulgence and favour even to the offending part of his people.1

Belsham, an English writer partial to the Americans, has commented with severity on the speech with which Governor Bernard followed up the reading of this letter, and of which Mr. Hutchinson 2 states that it was 'much more animated than the first.' The increased irritation, which the Whigs of Boston displayed, probably began, however, before the delivery of that speech, upon the perusal of Secretary Conway's letter; for, although Belsham describes it and the Secretary's other letters as 'wise, firm, and temperate, breathing the genuine spirit of conciliation,' the despatch just quoted strongly upholds the prerogative, condemns the conduct not only of the rioters, but even of the Legislature, and lauds the behaviour of the Governor. Moreover, Belsham ignores the fact that between the date of General Conway's letters, written in London, and the delivery of both the Governor's speeches, an insult had been inflicted on his office, and indeed on the King of England, by the exclusion of the royal functionaries from the Council, which accounts for some warmth in their

1 Belsham, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., vol. ii., Appendix. 2 Hutchinson does not give the Governor's speech on the day of opening, or the reply to it.