CHAPTER IV.

ANTI-STAMP ARGUMENTS AND MEASURES-THE "BOSTON MASSACRE."

ON

N the very day when was made the long journal entry, quoted at the close of the last chapter, a town meeting was held in Boston, at which it was determined that a memorial be presented to the governor and council, protesting against the closing of the courts as a denial of justice, and demanding that they be at once re-opened. Mr. Samuel Adams drew the memorial; to it was added a request that the town of Boston might be heard by counsel upon the matter. The memorial was forthwith forwarded, and the request for a hearing at once granted. On the day following John Adams received, at his home at Braintree, the following letter:

"SIR: I am directed, by the town, to notify you that they have this day voted unanimously that Jeremiah Gridley, James Otis, and John Adams, esquires, be applied to as counsel to appear before his excellency the governor, in council, in support of their memorial, praying that the courts of law in this province may be opened. A copy of said memorial will be handed you, upon your coming to town.

"I am, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

"John Adams, Esq.

"Boston, December 18, 1765."

WILLIAM COOPER,

Town Clerk.

The selection of so young a man, and one not a resident of the town, was an honor of which Mr. Adams might well feel proud; proud he was, and very much surprised, but he did not give himself very much time for self-gratulation or conjecture, going, at once, as always, to the root of the matter, and questioning of himself how he might best perform this unexpected duty. His journal of the 19th says, after quoting the letter referred to: "The reason which induced Boston to choose me, at a distance and unknown as I am, the particular persons concerned, and measures concerted to bring this about, I am wholly at a loss to conjecture, as I am what the

future effects and consequences will be, both with regard to myself and the public. But, when I recollect my own reflections and speculations yesterday, a part of which were committed to writing last night, and may be seen under December 18th, and compare them with the proceedings of Boston yesterday, of which the foregoing letter informed me, I cannot but wonder and call to mind my Lord Bacon's observation about secret inexorable laws of nature, and communications and influence, between places, that are not discoverable by sense. But I am now under all obligations of interest and ambition, as well as honor, gratitude, and duty, to exert the utmost of my abilities in this important cause. How shall it be conducted; shall we contend that the stamp act is void-that the parliament has no authority to impose internal taxes upon us, because we are not represented in it, and, therefore, that the stamp act ought to be waived, by the judges, as against natural equity and the constitution? Shall we use these as arguments for opening the courts of law? or shall we ground ourselves on necessity only?"

On Friday, the 20th of December, Mr. Adams went to Boston and, in company with his associates in the matter, spent the whole day in attendance before the committee of the town and a large number of citizens. During this meeting Adams stated quite freely his views of the matter. After the candles had been lighted, came a message from the governor, that he was in session with his council, and would hear the argument of the issues arising under the memorial, but that no persons save the counsel for the town should be permitted to attend. Having reached the chamber the governor recommended that the counsel should divide their argument among them by topics, thus avoiding repetition. Gridley was attorneygeneral of the crown; Otis had committed himself, in the pamphlet referred to, to a narrow line of defense-neither desired to assail the stamp act as unconstitutional and void. Hence to Adams fell the lot of making the only points against the act which could have justified the governor in ignoring it As junior counsel, he made the opening argument and that, too, upon a question which had never before been raised in any court, and entirely without special preparation. His argument went to the root of the matter; beginning with the assumption that the stamp act was not in any sense the act of the memorialists, they having never consented to it, he proceeded to demonstrate the necessary correlation of taxation with representation. Then, descending from the general to the specific, he urged the absence of any officer commissioned to distribute the stamps and the consequent impossibility of enforcing the law, as sufficient excuse for opening the courts to prevent a denial of justice. Mr. Otis discussed the enforced infraction of the judges' oaths, and Mr. Gridley confined his argument to the immediate damage and inconveniences caused by the closing of the courts. ernor refused to entertain the memorial or to go into its merits, holding that, while the arguments were many of them very good ones, the application

The gov

could only properly lie to the court of law; that the determination of such a question by the governor and council of a province, would be unprecedented and would lay the former open to the charge of arrogating to himself powers which he did not possess. This answer was but an evasion, and Bernard's course throughout was evidently disingenuous. If he did not possess authority in the mattter of the memorial, he must have known it before consenting to hear counsel, and his action bears the appearance of having been dictated by a desire to know the attitude which the town would take toward the question. His decision, that an application to open the courts must be made to those courts, though closed, calls for no comment. Upon the question of damage and inconvenience, arising from the stoppage of the legal machinery of the colony, he may justly have held that, as Oliver's enforced resignation of his office was the act of the people, the people must suffer the consequences.

On the day following the argument before the governor, Adams was requested to attend a meeting of the committee of the town, called for that day. He was, consequently, present. The counsel reported the result of the argument, including the recommendation of the governor that the judges should take upon themselves the decision of the question. The meeting received the report, then voted unanimously that the reply of the governor was not satisfactory. The counsel were called on in turn to express their opinion in the premises. There was the inevitable difference among them as to the course most advisable to be adopted, but all were united in the opinion that the proposed application to the judges would be alike ineffectual and injudicious, while the balance of opinion seemed to favor postponing the matter for the time, at least, and, with this, the meeting adjourned.

It is impossible to further follow the history of the anti-stamp agitation. Every effort to obtain redress failing, the law was openly defied, by the courts of the colony, by individual citizens, and even in the custom houses; the stamps grew moldy in the store-houses, the authority of the crown and parliament was scouted, and, at last, an ignominious repeal of the act put a period to the agitation. The repeal of the stamp act lacked but one element of wisdom. Had it been an unconditional retreat from the position of the British administration, there would have been an end of all trouble. in the matter. As it was, the act of repeal strongly reaffirmed the right of taxation, though it removed an obnoxious law. The people were, however, in no mood for hair-splitting, and were ready enough to accept and rejoice in their victory, though they reserved to themselves the right to oppose, with vigor, any effort to enforce the right assumed by the crown. As no such occasion came at once, the years immediately following the repeal were quiet and tranquil. Business fell again into its old routine, commerce thrived, the courts moved smoothly, and a casual observer might