The Massachusetts Spy

For the Massachusetts Spy.

WHEN I consider the dignity of a free people, and reflect that even Kings, and what are greater than Kings, the laws and constitutions by which Kings are governed, are made and maintained by them; I can scarce moderate my resentment at the cavalier treatment they daily receive from an absolute slave; a creature of the people's servant! "I shall, says his absolute independence, always consult his Majesty's service as to the time of meeting the General Assembly, and govern myself accordingly." A laconic answer indeed most dread sovereign. Your master's prerogative of making peace and war, is as absolute as yours in meeting the General Assembly, yet he has been civil enough to consult his parliament on these, and every other affair of importance which of late years has come before him. But a new system it seems is on foot; horses are to become riders, and servants the lords of their masters.

These projects might succeed among barbarians unconscious of their rights or the infinite obligation, under which they lie to defend them. Cyrus, according to De Ramsay, was to possess his army with a belief, that he knew what was for their general advantage better than they all. Jenghiz Khan could persuade his followers they were conquering for themselves while they ravaged for him. I am widely mistaken if the Rhode-Island addressers, even seconded by their more enlightened brethren the Sandemanians, inspire the good people of this province with the awful ideas of Mr. Hutchinson's superior talents as the subjects of either of these princes entertained of theirs. A wise and lettered commonwealth will ever distinguish between the man who makes their happiness and security the whole of his study, and the miscreant who entirely devotes himself to the service of their enemies; officiously divests himself of every power to serve them, and stretches every nerve to hasten and confirm their destruction: We seem to want but two instructions more to open the blindest eyes in the province to the designs of the ministry, viz. To disarm the people, and stop the press. Military discipline is entirely discouraged in the province of New-York; and no boasts can be made of the measures taken for its promotion by authority here. Mr. Hutchinson notwithstanding the grandeur of mind ascribed to him by the honourable VERUS, could not forbear wreaking a little of his pointless spleen against the harmless Printer of the Spy, for acting agreeable to his proposal of issuing every thing worthy of notice to the public impartially. But we are to remember that we live in a day when even a Lord-Mayor of London is sent to the Tower for doing his duty according to law. May God of his mercy shorten the reign of such wanton tyrants!

Behold my countrymen, the rare effects of suffering servants gradually to usurp the dominion over their masters! My Lords Commissioners and all their cattle are now avowedly considered a separate condition of men in the state. It is true enough; but a distinction I confess I should scarce have found the hardiness to think of establishing, in a country so conscious of the tendency, of such usurpations. Themselves have long since established the distinction of friends to government, and friends to the people; and as long have I lamented that the people have hitherto wanted spirit enough to free themselves of the cause as they have done of the instruments of their ruin. But such has been our dependence on the justice of our sovereign, that we thought it impossible he should thus long defer the redress of our so intolerable and enormous grievances. How prudent we have been in suffering him to be imposed upon so long by a set of villains, who treasonably persuaded him his subjects would be made their slaves, to his advantage, I leave others to determine. One thing I have thoroughly determined, and that is to hold an incessant and unremitting combat with the enemies of the freedom and happiness of my country, as long as a pen can be held, or a sword can be wielded by the hand of

LEONIDAS.