England were the only Christians in America who were deprived of what they believed to be the necessary means of religious discipline; that the rite of confirmation, which is so important in the Anglican system, was unknown among them; that it was an intolerable grievance and a fatal discouragement to their creed, that every candidate for ordination was obliged to travel 6,000 miles before he could become qualified to conduct public worship in his own village. By a very low computation, it was said, this necessity alone, imposed on each candidate an expenditure of 100%., and out of fifty-two candidates who, in 1767, crossed the sea from the Northern colonies, no less than ten had died on the voyage or from its results. More than once the propriety of sending out one or two bishops to the colonies had been discussed, but the notion always produced such a storm of indignation in New England that it was speedily abandoned. It was not indeed a question on which the Ministers at all cared to provoke American opinion; and it is a curiously significant illustration of the theological indifference of the English Government that the first Anglican colonial bishop was the Bishop of Nova Scotia, who was only appointed in 1787; and that the first Anglican Indian bishop was the Bishop of Calcutta, who was appointed by the influence of Wilberforce in 1814.

It is easy to conceive how fiercely a Protestantism as jealous and sensitive as that of New England must have resented the establishment of Catholicism in Canada; and in these colonies at least the political influence exercised by the clergy was very great. Public meetings were held in the churches. Proclamations were read from the pulpit. The Episcopalianism of a large proportion of the Government officers contributed perceptibly to their unpopularity; political preaching was almost universal, and the sermons of Mayhew, Chauncey, and Samuel Cooper had much influence in stimulating resistance. The few clergymen who abstained from introducing politics into the pulpit were looked upon with great suspicion or dislike. The fast days which were held in every important crisis diffused, intensified,

1 Petition to Lord Hillsborough from the Anglican clergy of New York and New Jersey, Oct. 12, 1771. MSS. Record Office.

2 This was one of the charges brought against Dr. Byles, a well

known Tory clergyman in Boston. He answered his accusers: 'I do not understand politics, and you all do.

You have politics all the week: pray let one day in seven be devoted to religion. . . . Give me any subject

CH. XII.

AMERICA SUPPORTS BOSTON.

403 and consecrated the spirit of resistance, and gave a semireligious tone to the whole movement. There were a few prominent leaders, indeed, who were of a different character. Otis lamented bitterly that the profession of a saintly piety was in New England the best means of obtaining political power. Franklin was intensely secular in the character of his mind, and his theology was confined to an admiration for the pure moral teaching of the Evangelists, while Jefferson sympathised with the freethinkers of France; but such ways of thinking were not common in America, and the fervid Puritanism of New England had a very important bearing upon the character of the struggle.

It was soon evident that the Americans were not intimidated by the Coercion Acts, and that the hope of the Ministry that resistance would be confined to Massachusetts, and perhaps to Boston, was wholly deceptive. The closing of the port of Boston took place on the 1st of June, 1774, but before that time the sympathies of the other colonies had been clearly shown. The Assembly of Virginia, which was in session when the news of the intended measure arrived, of its own authority appointed the 1st of June to be set apart as a day of fasting, prayer, and humiliation, to implore the Divine interposition to avert the heavy calamity which threatened destruction to their civil rights, with the evils of civil war, and to give one heart and one mind to the people firmly to oppose every injury to the American rights.' The Governor at once dissolved the House, but its members reassembled, drew up a declaration expressing warm sympathy with Boston, and called upon all the colonies to support it. The example was speedily followed. Subscriptions poured in for the relief of the Boston poor who were thrown out of employment by the closing of the port. Virginia, South Carolina, and Maryland sent great quantities of corn and rice. Salem and Marblehead, which were expected to grow rich by the ruin of Boston, offered the Boston merchants the free use of their harbours, wharfs, and warehouses. Provincial, town, and

to preach on of more consequence than the truths I bring to you, and I will preach on it next Sabbath.' Lafayette mentions how, 'ayant taxé un ministre anglican de ne parler que du ciel,' he was much gratified on the following Sunday by hearing from

the pulpit a denunciation of the 'execrable house of Hanover.'-Mém. de Lafayette, i. 38. See too on the use made of days of fasting and prayer' for the purpose of exciting the revolutionary feeling, Tucker's Life of Jefferson, i. 54, 55.

county meetings were held in every colony encouraging Boston to resist, and the 1st of June was generally observed throughout America as a day of fasting and prayer. The Assembly of Massachusetts was convoked by the new Governor, and soon after removed from Boston to Salem, and it showed its feelings by calling on him to appoint a day of general fasting and prayer, by recommending the assembly of a congress of representatives of all the colonies to take measures for the security of colonial liberty, by accusing the British Government of an evident design to destroy the free constitutions of America, and to erect in their place systems of tyranny and arbitrary sway, and by calling upon their constituents to obstruct the Government by every means in their power, and to give up every kind of intercourse with England till their wrongs were redressed. As was expected in Boston, the Assembly was at once dissolved, but the movement of resistance was unchecked. An attempt made by some loyalists to procure a resolution from a public meeting in favour of paying the East India Company for the tea which had been destroyed was defeated by a great majority. The system of committees charged in every district with organising resistance and keeping up correspondence between the colonies, which had been found so efficient in 1765 and 1767, was revived; the press and the pulpit all over America called on the people to unite; and a 'solemn league and covenant' was formed, binding the subscribers to abstain from all commercial intercourse with Great Britain till the obnoxious Acts were repealed. It was agreed that all delinquents should be held up in the newspapers to popular vengeance, and on the 5th of September, 1774, the delegates of the twelve States assembled in Congress at Philadelphia.

'The die is now cast,' wrote the King at this time; the colonies must either submit or triumph.' The war did not indeed yet break out, but both sides were rapidly preparing. Fresh ships of war and fresh troops were sent to Boston. General Gage fortified the neck of land which connected it with the continent; he took possession, amid fierce demonstrations of popular indignation, of the gunpowder in some of the arsenals of New England; he issued a proclamation describing the new 'league and covenant' as an illegal

CHI. XII.

MOB VIOLENCE IN AMERICA.

405

and traitorous combination,' but he was unable to obtain any prosecution. He tried to erect new barracks in Boston, but found it almost impossible to obtain builders. Most of the new councillors appointed by the Crown were obliged by mob violence to resign their posts, and the few who accepted the appointment were held up to execration as enemies of their country. Riots and outrages were of almost daily occurrence. Conspicuous Tories tarred and feathered, or placed astride of iron rails, were carried in triumph through the streets of the chief towns. One man was fastened in the body of a dead ox which he had bought from an obnoxious loyalist, and thus carted for several miles between Plymouth and Kingston. Another was nearly suffocated by being confined in a room with a fire, while the chimney and all other apertures were carefully closed. Juries summoned under the new regulations refused to be sworn. Judges who accepted salaries from the Crown were prevented by armed mobs from going to their courts. Most of the courts of justice in Massachusetts were forcibly closed, and the judges of the Supreme Court informed General Gage that it was totally impossible for them to administer justice in the province, that no jurors could be obtained, and that the troops were altogether insufficient for their protection.

Conspicuous politicians, even members of the Congress, are said to have led the mobs. In Berkshire the mob actually forced the judges from the bench and shut up the court-house. At Worcester, about 5,000 persons, a large proportion of them being armed, having formed themselves in two files, compelled the judges, sheriffs, and gentlemen of the bar to pass between them with bare heads, and at least thirty times to read a paper promising to hold no courts under the new Acts of Parliament. At Springfield the judges and sheriffs were treated with the same ignominy. At Westminster, in the province of New York, the court-house and jail were captured by the mob, and the judges, sheriffs, and many loyalist inhabitants were locked up in prison. A judge in the same province had the courage to commit to prison a man who was employed in disarming the loyalists. The prisoner was at once rescued, and the judge carried, tarred and feathered, five or six miles through the country. Great

Moore's Diary of the American Revolution, vol. i. 37-52, 138. This

numbers of loyalists were driven from their estates or their business; and except under the very guns of British soldiers, they could find no safety in New England. As the Crown possessed scarcely any patronage in the colonies to reward its friends, all but the most courageous and devoted were reduced to silence, or hastened to identify themselves with the popular cause. 'Are not the bands of society,' wrote a very able loyalist at this time, 'cast asunder, and the sanctions that hold man to man trampled upon? Can any of us recover debts, or obtain compensation for an injury, by law? Are not many persons whom we once respected and revered driven from their homes and families, and forced to fly to the army for protection, for no other reason but their having accepted commissions under our King? Is not civil government dissolved? ... What kind of offence is it for a number of men to assemble armed, and forcibly to obstruct the course of justice, even to prevent the King's courts from being held at their stated terms; to seize upon the King's provincial revenue, I mean the moneys collected by virtue of grants made to his Majesty for the support of his government within this province; to assemble without being called by authority, and to pass Governmental Acts; to take the militia out of the hands of the King's representative, or to form a new militia; to raise men and appoint officers for a public purpose without the order or permission of the King or his representative, or to take arms and march with a professed design of opposing the King's troops?' Committees not known in law frequently elect themselves into a tribunal, where the same persons are at once legislator, accusers, witnesses, judges, and jurors, and the mob the executioners. The accused has no day in court, and the execution of the sentence is the first notice he receives. This is the channel through which liberty matters bave been chiefly conducted the summer and fall past. . . . It is chiefly owing to these committees that so many respectable persons have been abused and forced to sign recantations and resignations; that so many persons, to avoid such reiterated

...

very interesting book is a collection of extracts from the contemporary newspapers on both sides of the question, and gives a vivid picture of the social

condition of the colonies. See too Force's American Archives (4th series), i. 747, 748, 767-769, 795, 1260– 1263.