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By Root 1953 0

unexpectedly revived in Massachusetts in January 1773, when Governor Thomas Hutchinson rashly opened the winter session of the legislature with a speech explaining why Americans were not exempt from the jurisdiction of Parliament. Hutchinson was responding to recent attacks on his own administration launched by the Boston Committee of Correspondence. His speech was meant to quiet the opposition. Instead, it plunged Massachusetts into still greater turmoil, as John Adams and James Otis rebutted the governor’s position in responses prepared for the two houses of the legislature.

These addresses were in turn reprinted in newspaper and pamphlet form, and consumed by interested readers in other colonies. The pamphlet and the newspaper essay were the principal forms of political expression in eighteenth-century America, and most political controversies soon found their way into one or the other. Many pamphlets originated as newspaper essays. Some were deeply learned and filled with scholarly citations. Others were more pungent or humorous, like Benjamin Franklin’s Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, published in 1773. Franklin had been living in London for a good fifteen years when he published this essay. Though he still hoped that Britain and its colonies would remain united, he was increasingly frustrated by his dealings with British officials who dismissed the colonists’ assertions of loyalty. As he did so often, Franklin used a light touch to support a serious conclusion: that British policy seemed design to alienate the Americans’ natural affection for the mother country

A year later, humor was no longer possible. The adoption of the Coercive or Intolerable Acts led American writers to demonstrate, once and for all, why the colonies could not be legally bound by acts of Parliament. One of the most influential publications opposing the Acts was a pamphlet that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote as instructions for the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress. Jefferson’s cogent prose in A Summary View of the Rights of British America helped establish the reputation that led to his later authorship of the Declaration of Independence.

—Thomas Hutchinson—

THE ADDRESS OF THE GOVERNOR

JANUARY 6, 1773

His Excellency the Governor was pleased to open the Assembly

with the following Speech to both Houses, viz.

Gentlemen of the Council, and,

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives.

I HAVE NOTHING IN special Command from his Majesty to lay before you at this Time; I have general Instructions to recommend to you, at all Times, such Measures as may tend to promote that Peace and Order upon which your own Happiness and Prosperity as well as his Majesty’s Service very much depend. That the Government is at present in a disturbed and disordered State is a Truth too evident to be denied. The Cause of this Disorder appears to me equally evident. I wish I may be able to make it appear so to you, for then I may not doubt that you will agree with me in the proper Measures for the Removal of it. I have pleased myself, for several Years past, with Hopes that the Cause would cease of itself and the Effect with it, but I am disappointed, and I may not any longer, consistent with my Duty to the King and my Regard to the Interest of the Province, delay communicating my Sentiments to you upon a Matter of so great Importance. I shall be explicit and treat the Subject without Reserve. I hope you will receive what I have to say upon it with Candor, and, if you shall not agree in Sentiments with me, I promise you, with Candor likewise, to receive and consider what you may offer in Answer.

When our Predecessors first took Possession of this Plantation or Colony, under a Grant and Charter from the Crown of England, it was their Sense, and it was the Sense of the Kingdom, that they were to remain subject to the supreme Authority of Parliament. This appears from the Charter itself and from other irresistable Evidence. This Supreme Authority has, from Time to Time, been exercised by Parliament and submitted