Chapter 28:
The British aristocracy reduce their own taxes—defeat of Chatham's Administration by the Mosaic Opposition.January—March, 1767.
The day after Townshend braved his colleaguesChap. Xxviii} 1767. Jan. |
Feb |
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the Legislature of Massachusetts convened.
Hutchinson, having received his compensation as a sufferer by the riots, restrained his ambition no longer, and took a seat in the Council as though it of right belonged to the Lieutenant Governor.1 The House resented ‘the lust of power,’ manifested by his intrusion into an elective body of which he had not been chosen a member.2 The Council, by a unanimous vote, denied his pretensions.
The language of the Charter was too explicit to admit of a doubt;3 yet Bernard, as the accomplice of Hutchinson, urged the interposition of the central Government.
Men feared more and more the system which
Paxton had gone to mature.
With unshaken confidence in Hawley, Otis, and Samuel Adams,4 they
1 Bernard to Secretary of State, 7 Feb. 1767, and 21 Feb. 1767.
2 Answer of the House, 31 Jan. 1767, in Bradford, 104; and Letter from the House to Dennys De Berdt, 16 March, 1767
3 Opinion of the Attorney General in England, cited in ‘a Minute relative to Massachusetts Bay,’ 1767.
4 Freeborn American, in Boston Gazette, 9 March, 1767.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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