from a sordid love of gain, he had counteracted his professed sentiments, and so to render him ridiculous there? I doubt not but that both the general and Mr. Hancock know it to be a falsehood." The charge was repelled as follows, in the very next Gazette:

"MESSRS. EDES & GILL:

"I observe in your last paper a piece signed Veritas, the writer of which says he had it from good authority, that a letter under my hand was published in a coffee-house, at New York, requesting His Excellency Gen. Gage that I might supply the troops then expected, and which have since arrived in this town. If such a letter has been produced there, or anywhere else, I declare it to be a forgery; for I have never made application to any for the supply of said troops, nor did I ever desire any person to do it for me. The person who produced the letter could have no other design but to injure my reputa

tion, and abuse the gentlemen of New York. I therefore desire you would give this a place in your next, in which you will oblige

"Your humble servant,

"Boston, Nov. 12, 1768."

JOHN HANCOCK.

In the fall of this year, a great uproar was raised in Boston on account of the unlading in the night of a cargo of wines from the sloop Liberty, from Madeira, belonging to John Hancock, without paying the customs. Mr. Hancock was prosecuted upon a great number of libels, for penalties upon acts of Parliament, amounting to ninety or a hundred thousand pounds sterling. "He thought fit to engage me as his counsel and advocate," says John Adams, "and a painful drudgery I had of his cause. There were few days, through the whole winter, when I was not summoned to attend the Court of Admiralty. It seemed as if the officers of the crown were determined to examine the whole town as witnesses. Almost every day a fresh witness was to be examined upon interrogatories. They interrogated many of his near relations and most intimate friends, and threatened to summon his amiable and venerable aunt, the relict of his uncle, Thomas Hancock, who had left the greatest part of his fortune to him. I was thoroughly weary and disgusted with the court, the officers of the crown, the cause, and even with the tyrannical bell that dangled me out of my house every morning; and this odious cause was suspended at last only by the Battle of Lexington, which put an end forever to all such pros

ecutions." Hutchinson, who enlarges on this affair, remarks, that an entry was made at the custom-house, upon oath, of four or five pipes only as the whole cargo; and this was as much a submission to the authority of the act as if the whole cargo had been entered. The remainder was landed in the night, or evening; and the wines, or freight, were sent to the owners, and no duty demanded. A furious riot ensued. The collector and comptroller had their windows broken, and a boat, belonging to the custom-house, was drawn in triumph through the streets of Boston, and burnt on the Common.

Hancock constantly associated with the avowed advocates of liberty, and was an active member of the North End Caucus, which frequently gathered at William Campbell's house, near the North Battery, originated by Dr. Joseph Warren, who, with another person, drew up the regulations of the caucus. Here the committees of public service were formed, the plan for military companies and means of defence, and the resolves for the destruction of the detestable tea. Dr. Thomas Young was its first president, when it consisted of sixty-one members. It was here, when the best mode of expelling the regulars from Boston was discussed, that Hancock exclaimed, "Burn Boston, and make John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it!"

King George the Third sanctioned Lord North's bill repealing duties, excepting that on tea, April 12, 1770. Shortly after this decision, several cargoes of tea had arrived in Boston, and nothing would satisfy the people but its immediate return. The ladies signed a pledge not to drink any tea, except in sickness; and John Hancock offered one of his vessels, freight free of expense, for that purpose, and a load of the detestable weed was conveyed to the London consignees. Samuel Adams was the chief counsellor in the destruction of the tea, Dec., 1773, and the hall of council was the back room of the Boston Gazette, at the corner of Queen and Brattle streets. In Thomas' Spy we find a poetical effusion on this subject:

"Farewell the tea-board, with its equipage

Of cups and saucers, cream-bucket and sugar-tongs ;
The pretty tea-chest, also, lately stored

With hyson, congo, and best double fine.

Full many a joyous moment have I sat by you,

Hearing the girls tattle, the old maids talk scandal,

And the spruce coxcomb laugh at may-be nothing.

No more shall I dish out the once-loved liquor,
Though now detestable,

Because I am taught, and I believe it true,

Its use will fasten slavish chains upon my country;
And Liberty 's the goddess I would choose

To reign triumphant in America!"

In the year 1772 Hancock was elected to the command of the Independent Cadets, well known as the governor's guard; and we find, by the Boston Gazette of May 12, at this date, the announcement of the election of John Hancock as a Boston representative, as moderator of the town-meeting, and his appointment by Gov. Hutchinson as commander of the Cadets, which is stated as follows: "His Excellency the Captain General has been pleased to commissionate John Hancock, Esq., to be Captain of the Company of Cadets, with the rank of Colonel :" and the promptness with which Col. Hancock entered upon the duties of his office is shown by the following advertisement, which appears in the next column of the Gazette: "WANTED, Immediately, For his Excellency's Company of Cadets, Two Fifers that understand Playing. Those that are Masters of Musick, and are inclined to engage with the Company, are desired to apply to Col. JOHN HANCOCK.”

When Thomas Gage landed at Long Wharf, May 19, 1774, this company escorted the new governor, in an extensive civil and military procession, to the council-chamber, at the old State-house, in Kingstreet, after which they conducted Gage, under Col. Hancock, to the Province-house, then the governor's residence. Gov. Gage soon became jealous of Hancock, for in August of this year he was notified, by Secretary Flucker, that the governor had no further occasion for his services as the commander; on which, the corps disbanded themselves, and deputed a committee to wait on Gage, at Danvers, surrendering to him the standard with his arms, which his excellency had presented them on his arrival from London, informing him that they no longer considered themselves as the governor's Independent Cadets. In an address to Hancock, Aug. 18, 1774, signed by fifty-two members, they remark, "At a period when the post of honor is a private station, it cannot be thought strange that a gentleman of your distinguished character should meet with every discouragement from men in power;" and Col. Hancock said, in reply, "I am ever ready to appear in a public station, when the honor or the interest of the community calls me; but shall always prefer retirement in a private station, to being a tool in the hand of power to oppress my countrymen." Gage and Hancock never came together again as political friends.

1

The orator on the Massacre, in the year 1774, was Col. John Hancock. His performance was remarkably bold and effective, giving great offence to the executive, and more especially to the officers of the standing army; indeed, it was a striking act of intrepidity. At the close of the exercises, a very generous collection was taken up for the unfortunate Christopher Monk, now about twenty-three years old, then present, who was wounded on the fatal evening of the Massacre, and was a shocking monument of that horrid catastrophe. This production was elegant, pathetic, and spirited. The allusion of Hancock to the attempt of Parliament to enforce obedience to acts which neither God nor man ever authorized them to make, forcibly reminds us of James Otis, their most effective opponent, who was as "a wedge to split the lignum vitæ block of parliamentary usurpation." John Adams, who was present on the occasion, remarks, the composition, the pronunciation, the action, all exceeded the expectation of everybody. They exceeded even mine, which were very considerable. Many of the sentiments came with great propriety from him. His invective, particularly against a preference of riches to virtue, came from him with a singular grace and dignity: "Despise the glare of wealth. The people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved. They plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is in their esteem to be preferred to virtue." The lantern exhibition occurred on the succeeding Monday. In one of the windows at Mrs. Clapham's, was a painting of Gov. Hutchinson and Judge Peter Oliver, in the horrors occasioned by the appearance of the ghosts of Empson and Dudley, advising them to think of their fate:

"Ye traitors! Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,

Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the men

Who owe their greatness to their country's ruin?"

On turning to Hutchinson, it is related that, on the evening after the delivery of the oration, "a select number of persons, styled in the newspapers friends of constitutional liberty, assembled at a house in King-street, Boston. Among them were the speaker and divers members of the House of Representatives. Figures were exhibited, through the windows of the room, to the people in the street, of the governor and chief-justice, in derision. Such abuse of private characters it is

generally best to treat with contempt;" and the Boston Post printed an original song for the Fifth of March, written in eight verses, the first of which says:

"When the foes of the land our destruction had planned,

They sent ragged troops for our masters;

But, from former defeat, they must now understand
Their wolves shall not prowl in our pastures."

As an embodiment of the condition and spirit of the Bostonians is indicated in this passage, we make no apology for its insertion here: "It was easy to foresee the consequences which so naturally followed upon sending troops into America, to enforce obedience to acts of the British Parliament which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make. It was reasonable to expect that troops who knew the errand they were sent upon would treat the people whom they were to subjugate with a cruelty and haughtiness which too often buries the honorable character of a soldier in the disgraceful name of an unfeeling ruffian. The troops, upon their first arrival, took possession of our senate-house, and pointed their cannon against the judgment-hall, and even continued them there whilst the Supreme Court of judicature for this province was actually sitting to decide upon the lives and fortunes of the king's subjects. Our streets nightly resounded with the noise of riot and debauchery; our peaceful citizens were hourly exposed to shameful insults, and often felt the effects of their violence and outrage. But this was not all. As though they thought it not enough to violate our civil rights, they endeavored to deprive us of our religious privileges; to vitiate our morals, and thereby render us deserving of destruction. Hence the rude din of arms which broke in upon your solemn devotions in your temples, on that hallowed day by Heaven, and set apart by God himself for his peculiar worship. Hence impious oaths and blasphemies so often tortured your unaccustomed ear. Hence all the arts which idleness and luxury could invent were used to betray our youth of one sex into extravagance and effeminacy, and of the other to infamy and ruin. And did they not succeed but too well? Did not a reverence for religion sensibly decay? Did not our infants almost learn to lisp out curses before they knew their horrid import? Did not our youth forget they were Americans, and, regardless of the admonitions of the wise and aged, servilely copy from their tyrants those vices which must finally overthrow the empire of Great