If Borgia could do more? Tyrant! dismiss your rebel clans,— Nor let that blood imbrue thine hands Gave George his only right; And fiends, who guard his inmost cell, Lo! commerce founders on a rock, The British Lion dies! JOHN HANCOCK. MARCH 5, 1774. ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE. WAS born at Braintree, Jan. 17, 1737, the son of Rev. John Hancock, of that town, whose wife was Mary Hawke, of Hingham. He was a grandson of Rev. John Hancock, of Lexington. His father deceased when he was but seven years of age, on which he was removed to the family of his grandfather, at Lexington, who attended to his early education. He entered the Boston Latin School in 1745, and graduated at Harvard College in 1754. His uncle, Thomas Hancock, a Boston bookseller, who became one of the wealthiest merchants in the province, and died in August 1764, bequeathed him more than fifty thousand pounds sterling, besides the reversion of twenty thousand pounds at the decease of his widow, who was a daughter of Daniel Henchman, in whose bookstore he had been a clerk. When young, John visited London, in 1760, on mercantile business, in company with Gov. Pownal, who was recalled. He witnessed the funeral obsequies of George the Second, and subsequently the coronation of George the Third, not anticipating that he beheld the monarch who was destined to offer a reward for his head. Young Hancock learned the art of swimming, in the river Thames. Gov. Hutchinson, who very naturally indulged detracting views of John Hancock, who became a powerful opponent of his administration, remarks, in the History of Massachusetts Bay, that his ruling passion was a fondness for popular applause; and he changed the course of his patron's business, in whose counting-room he had been a clerk, and built and employed in trade a great number of ships,-and in this way, and by building at the same time several houses, he found work for a great number of tradesmen, made himself popular, was chosen selectman, representative in 1769, moderator of town-meetings, etc. In relation to the demeanor of Hancock, it is stated by John Adams, that Dr. Eliot Rawson thinks Hancock vain, told a story: I was at school with him, and then upon a level with him. My father was richer than his. But I was not long since at his store, and said to Mr. Glover, whom I knew, "This, I think, is Mr. Hancock. He just asked my name, and nothing more, it was such a piece of vanity! There is not the merest creature that comes from your way, but I take notice of him,- and I ought. What though I am worth a little more than they? I am glad of it, and that I have it, that I may give some of it." I told the doctor that Mr. Hancock was far from being arrogant. In order to gratify persons of antiquarian taste, we transcribe the following advertisement of John Hancock, when in commercial business, which is inserted in the Boston Evening Post of Dec. 25, 1764: "To be sold by John Hancock, at his Store No. 4, at the East End of Faneuil Hall Market, A general Assortment of English and India Goods, also choice Newcastle Coals, and Irish Butter, cheap for Cash. Said Hancock desires those persons who are still indebted to the Estate of the late Hon. Thomas Hancock, Esq., deceased, to be speedy in paying their respective balances, to prevent trouble. N. B. In the Lydia, Capt. Scott, from London, came the following packages: -I W. No. 1, a Trunk, No. 2, a small Parcel. The owner, by applying to John Hancock and paying freight, may have his Goods." This store was last occupied by Jabez Fisher & Co., and in 1824 was demolished, on the erection of the Quincy Market. It was located on the present South Market-street. His warehouses for the storage of foreign merchandise were located on the wharf well known as Hancock's Wharf. One day, John Adams and Samuel Adams, relates Waterhouse, were walking in the Boston Mall, and when they came opposite the stately mansion of John Hancock, the latter, turning to the former, said, with emphasis, "I have done a very good thing for our cause, in the course of the past week, by enlisting the master of that house into it. He is well disposed, and has great riches, and we can give him consequence to enjoy them." And Mr. Hancock did not disappoint his expectations; for, in spite of his occasional capriciousness, owing partly to disease, he threw all the weight of his fortune and extraordinary popularity into the scale of opposition to British encroachments. "The natural powers of Hancock were moderate," says Hutchinson," and had been very little improved by study or application to any kind of science. His ruling passion kept him from ever losing sight of his object, but he was fickle and inconstant in the means of pursuing it; and though for the most part he was closely attached to Mr. Samuel Adams, yet he was repeatedly broken off from all connection with him for several months together. Partly by inattention to his private affairs, and partly from want of judgment, he became greatly involved and distressed, and the estate was lost with much greater rapidity than it had been acquired." He was unboundedly lavish in his liberality. At the time of a great fire in Boston, when many of his tenements were destroyed, his tenants gathered around him, and expressed sympathy at his loss, knowing that was a way to reach his heart; on which he remarked, they were the greatest sufferers, having been almost ruined, while he was able to erect new buildings,-at the same time passing a shower of guineas around them. His generous spirit appeared in a multitude of forms. He presented the Bostonians a valuable fire-engine. He distributed deck-loads of wood to the suffering poor, in times of great peril, and gave the poor the free use of his extensive wood-lot in the town of Milton; and in Adams' Diary we have an incident arising from his liberality, related by James Otis, who stated that Col. Irving having met Parson Moorhead near his meeting-house, "You have a fine steeple and bell," says he, "to your meeting-house, now." "Yes, by the liberality of Mr. Hancock, and the subscriptions of some other gentlemen, we have a very handsome and convenient house of it, at last." "But what has happened to the vane, Mr. Moorhead? It don't traverse, it has pointed the same way these three weeks." "Ay, I did n't know it; I'll see about it." Away goes Moorhead, storming among his parish and the tradesmen who had built the steeple, for fastening the vane so that it could not The tradesmen were alarmed, and went to examine it; but soon found that the fault was not in the vane, but the weather, the wind having set very constantly at east three weeks before. move. Hutchinson was a native of Boston, and a graduate of the same college as Hancock and the two Adamses, toward each of whom his detracting spirit was parallel. He was dark, intriguing, insinuating, haughty, and ambitious, the extreme of avarice marking each feature. Oxenbridge Thacher gave Hutchinson the soubriquet of "Summa Potestatis." Hutchinson said of Samuel Adams that "he acquired a talent of artfully and fallaciously insinuating into the minds of his readers a prejudice against the characters of all whom he attacked, beyond any other;" and he said of John Adams, that "his ambition. was without bounds, and he has acknowledged to his acquaintance that he could not look with complaisance upon any man who was in possession of more wealth, more honors, or more knowledge, than himself." These are evidently the carpings of disappointed ambition; and it is related that when Hutchinson fled to England, he experienced the neglect and contempt of the House of Lords, and died at Brampton, June, 1780, in melancholy despondence. Trumbull thus alludes to Hutchinson, who "Affirmed he never wrote a line, Your chartered rights to undermine; To get the oppressive acts repealed! Yet once arrived on England's shore, When the two regiments of British troops debarked in Boston, Oct., 1768, they were received as unwelcome intruders, and the selectmen absolutely refused to grant them quarters. One of the regiments encamped on Boston Common. The other, after a fruitless attempt to obtain possession of the Manufactory House, marched at sunset to Faneuil Hall, where they waited several hours, before they had leave of occupation; Col. Dalrymple having pledged his honor that Faneuil Hall should be cleared as soon as possible, otherwise they must have suffered in the streets. The next day, the State-house, in Kingstreet, was opened, by order of Gov. Bernard, for their reception. John Hancock being well known as a decided advocate of the Provincialists, and the wealthiest merchant of Boston, an attempt was made to stigmatize his character. A writer in the Boston Gazette, of Nov. 7, 1768, remarked, in an article: "I have lately heard, from good authority, of an attempt to sully the reputation of a gentleman of great merit, as well as superior fortune, in this town,- a gentleman who has the entire confidence of his fellow-citizens, in various public stations; who has repeatedly served them in the General Assembly, and the last May had the honor of being chosen a member of His Majesty's Council, by a great majority of the suffrages of the two Houses of Assembly, though it must be acknowledged he was negatived by Gov. Bernard. What could induce a scribbler to forge a letter, and publish it in a coffee-house, in New York, under the name of that gentleman, requesting Gen. Gage that he might supply the troops now in town or expected, so unwelcome to the inhabitants, considering the errand on which all agree they are come,— unless it was to induce a belief in the minds of gentlemen in New York that, |