Old Boston Days & Ways. Mary Caroline Crawford
little bit of gentility to the height of the mode, and neglect the affairs of their families with as good a grace as the finest ladies in London."
Of course it was rich folk whom the visitor has here depicted, people who had their portraits painted, and attended such dinners as that given by Ralph Inman (on July 16, 1772) and thus described by John Rowe: "I went early to Mr. Inman's who made the genteelest Entertainment I ever saw on acct of his son George taking his Degree yesterday — he had three hundred and forty seven Gentlemen & Ladies dined. Two hundred & Ten at one Table — amongst the Company The Govr & Family, the Lieut Governour & Family, The Admirall & Family & all the Remainder, Gentlemen & Ladies of Character & Reputation. The whole was conducted with much Ease & Pleasure & all Joyned in making each other Happy — such an entertainment has not been made in New England before on any Occasion."
The common people and their contact with the social life of the time are more adequately represented in Bennett's picture of an eighteenth century Sunday in Boston. "Their observation of the Sabbath (which they rather choose to call by the name of the Lord's Day, whensoever they have occasion to mention it) is the strictest kept that ever I saw anywhere. On that day no man, woman or child is permitted to go out of town on any pretence whatsoever; nor can any that are out of town come in on the Lord's Day. The town being situated on a peninsula there is but one way out of it by land; which is over a narrow neck of land at the south end of the town, which is enclosed by a fortification and the gates shut by way of prevention.
There is a ferry, indeed, at the north end of the town; but care is taken by way of prevention there also.
"And as they will by no means admit of trading on Sunday, so they are equally tenacious about preserving good order in the town on the Lord's Day: and they will not suffer any one to walk down to the waterside, though some of the houses are adjoining to the several wharfs, nor, even in the hottest days of summer, will they admit of anyone to take air on the Common which lies contiguous to the town, as Moorfields does to Finsbury. And if two or three people who meet one another in the street by accident stand talking together, if they do not disperse immediately on the first notice they are liable to fine and imprisonment. But that which is the most extraordinary thing is that they commence the Sabbath from the setting of the sun on the Saturday evening; and, in conformity to that, all trade and business ceases, and every shop in the town is shut up: even a barber is finable for shaving after that time.
Nor are any of the taverns permitted to entertain company; for in that case, not only the house, but every person found therein is finable. . . .
"As to their ministers, there is no compulsory tax upon the people for their support, but everyone contributes according to their inclination or ability; and it is collected in the following manner: every Sunday, in the afternoon, as soon as the sermon is ended, and before the singing of the last psalm, they have a vacant space of time, on which there are three or four men come along with long wooden boxes which they present to every pew for the reception of what every one is pleased to put in them. The first time I saw this method of collecting for the parson, it put me in mind of the waiters at Sadler's Wells, who used to collect their money just before the beginning of the last act. But notwithstanding they thus collect the money for the maintenance of the clergy in general, yet they are not left to depend entirely upon the uncertainty of what people shall happen to give, but have a certain sum paid them every Monday morning whether so much happens to be collected or not; and no one of them has less than a hundred pounds sterling per annum, which is a comfortable support in this part of the world."
The total population of the Boston thus described was now about sixteen thousand people. Practically all of these people were readers and there were newspapers to suit every stripe of political persuasion. The people may be said to have edited their papers themselves, for instead of the impersonal articles of the modern journal the columns of the press were given over, — after the news and advertisements had been inserted, — to letters signed by such pseudonyms as " A Chatterer," " Vindex," "Philantrop" and so on. Adams contributed constantly to the Boston Gazette, whose bold proprietors, Edes and Gill, made their sheet the voice of the patriot sentiment and gave their office to be a rallying point for the popular leaders. "Vindex" is a favorite signature of Adams about this time. The following letter, prepared for the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act and printed in the Providence Gazette as well as in the publication of Edes and Gill, shows that Adams made no mistake in using his pen as a weapon: "When I consider the corruption of Great Britain, their load of debt, — their intestine divisions, tumults and riots, — their scarcity of provisions and the contempt in which they are held by the nations about them; and when I consider, on the other hand, the State of the American Colonies with Regard to the various Climates, Soils, Produce, rapid Population, joined to the virtue of the Inhabitants, — I cannot but think that the Conduct of Old England towards us may be permitted by Divine Wisdom, and ordained by the unsearchable providence of the Almighty for hastening a period dreadful to Great Britain.
"A Son of Liberty."
How inevitable it was that Adams should clash with Hutchinson we can easily see by placing alongside this extract a passage from a letter written not long after this, by the governor to a kinsman in Dublin, and pointing out that "the supreme absolute legislative power must remain in England." So, in the deepening strife, the Defender of Prerogative and the Man of the Town Meeting confront one another.
CHAPTER II. THE CHALLENGE TO THE CROWN
SHIPS of war, some little time before this, had cast anchor in the harbor, and two regiments were now (1770) encamped on the Common further to ensure the execution of the royal will. The cause of the coming of the troops had been the defiance by the Massachusetts legislature of the king's command to rescind a certain circular letter which had been sent out by Samuel Adams with the unmistakable purpose of securing the cooperation of the other colonies in resistance to the Townshend Acts. The king desired above all things to prevent any such union as this, and it occurred to him that he could do much to head it off by frightening the patriots with redcoats. But Parliament had its own quarrels with George III, and would not easily consent to this course. Accordingly, some excuse was needed to justify the unusual measure. The sacking of Hutchinson's house was made so to serve. Then, in June, 1768, there was a slight conflict between townspeople and revenue officers, in which no one was hurt, but which led to a great town meeting in the Old South Meeting-House, and gave color to Governor Bernard's complaint that Boston was a disorderly town, and that he was being intimidated and hindered in the execution of the laws there.
Yet the king's real purpose in sending the troops was, as has been hinted, to force the people to observe the odious Townshend Acts.
This being the case the arrival of the soldiers simply increased, of course, the danger of disturbance. Moreover, even according to British-made law, the men should have been lodged in Castle William down the harbor. The trouble which immediately ensued may be directly traced indeed to the infringement of this provision. For encounters between the soldiery and the town people soon became frequent, and in September, 1769, James Otis was brutally assaulted at the British Coffee House by one of the commissioners of customs, aided and abetted by two or three army officers.
Otis eventually became insane from being struck on the head in this affray, and the feeling of the people toward the soldiers naturally increased in bitterness.
The Boston Massacre was, then, as inevitable as the explosion of a cask of powder into which a lighted match has been thrown. For a week there had been collisions here and there throughout the town, and the affair before the Custom-house on King Street, in the course of which seven of Captain Preston's company fired into the crowd, killing five men and wounding several others, was but the logical climax to what had gone before. The slaughter of those five men, — one of whom was Crispus Attucks, now memorialized on Boston Common, — secured in a moment what a year and a half of decorous protest had failed to accomplish, — the withdrawal of the troops to the Castle. Hutchinson had to do this in spite of himself, for Samuel Adams, at the head of a committee just appointed by an immense mass-meeting in the Old South Church, came to him in the council chamber of the Town House and, in the name of three