The Massachusetts Spy

From Bingley's Journal, of June 29

To the Earl of Hillsborough.

My Lord,

Could experience teach you wisdom, or time remove the very unjust resentment you have conceived against his Majesty's most loyal, and most deserving subjects of the Massachusetts-Bay, you would not have given fresh cause of discontent in that province. The people, however, unsatisfied, were silent.

Why then, my Lord, did you repeat that odious grievance, of removing the assembly from their ancient, most convenient, and most desirable place of session, to one entirely the reverse? Is there one good end of government, that can possibly be answered by a measure totally nugatory; but in subjecting the assembly to much inconvenience, and in gratifying your pique, and that of Governor Bernard, against the people of Boston, whom neither your threats could awe, nor your arts could seduce, from boldly asserting their rights? Does so pitiful a resentment, and the yet more pitiful gratification of it, become the rank, or the place you fill?

But, my Lord, this measure is not only irritating and impolitic, but illegal. The assembly have fully proved it such; and all the arrogance and sophistry of your Governor, could not evade the force of their arguments. It is true, indeed, not only this, but every act of your administration gives full proof, that to act conformable to law was never in your inclination, or intention. In a mind not totally unprincipled, the signal services of that province would have outweighed their late opposition to the usurpations of government.

Their gallant storm and capture of Louisbourg, in the year 1745; their manning Admiral Saunders's fleet, so as to effectuate those operations, to which we owe the important reduction of Quebec, and of the conquest of Canada; their defence of his Majesty's garrison at Annapolis, and of all Nova-Scotia, in the war preceding the last; with many eminent instances of their zeal and ability to serve his Majesty and this country are buried in oblivion; while every opposition to government, however justified by the clearest principles of the constitution, is noted down, and marked for vengeance. This is the method your Lordship takes of securing their future services to the crown, and their attachment to the House of Hanover. The success will certainly be adequate to the means.

But even, if the present generation had no deserts to plead, the rights for which they are contending against your usurpation, for Parliament is only instrumental, are less than they would have merited through the unexampled hardships their ancestors endured in conquering that savage country.

Your Lordship must have seen the detail of their sufferings in the history of your very obsequious Governor Mr. Hutchinson. He indeed has betrayed those liberties, which he has taught us were so dearly purchased, for the pitiful ambition of being a Governor, under such a minister as your Lordship. He may now judge, whether there are sweets in power and gratified ambition to soothe the anguish of recollecting, that he has betrayed his country, and ruined his character forever.

The perfidy too, of Mr. Oliver has had its reward. To do you justice it is not your Lordship's fault, if a single eminent malefactor in America remains undignified and unrewarded. The account of Mr. Oliver's promotion is worthy the attention of the public. It will shew to what a consummate degree corruption has arrived, under your Lordship's American administration.

Mr. Oliver was Secretary to the council, when the late memorable military massacre was perpetrated in Boston; to take off the horror of this bloody business, it was the object of administration, and of its creatures, to make it appear suspicious than an insurrection was intended by the people. The Secretary, therefore, framed some minutes of Council, in which he perverted to their purpose what one of the members had said, and having secretly sworn to the truth of them, he, in concert with the present guiltless Governor, dispatched them, by no less a personage than a commissioner of the customs, to Lord Hillsborough.--My Lord, was it with this happy mixture of perjury and baseness, that you appeased the resentment our righteous Sovereign manifested for the barbarous murder of so many of his subjects? When an account of these minutes and this affidavit returned, for the sending them had been profoundly secret, the council unanimously resolved, and separately made oath, that what was there minuted, did not pass in council. Mr. Oliver stood recorded on the council-books as a perjured traitor, and.--can it be believed? he was immediately appointed his Majesty's Lieutenant-Governor of the province.

It is obvious, my Lord, and you have no doubt considered, that, in the hands of such men, government cannot fail of being respectable, and beloved among the people. That such a temper in America may even eventually be desirable, will appear to your Lordship from the following anecdote. A little more than a century past, when Charles the Second was driven from the throne, the colony of Virginia sent to offer him a refuge, and proclaimed him King before his restoration in this country. The revolutions of empires are in the hand of God, and we may well hope, that the present pious Court will never experience the misfortunes that overwhelmed that of Charles the First. But, my Lord, what has happened may happen again, and, in the most distant apprehension of such a calamity, it cannot but administer great consolation to your Lordship, that by your singular management the deposed Monarch would not secure of finding a most cordial reception in America.