USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Bridgeport > Reports and papers. Fairfield County Historical Society, Bridgeport, Conn. 1882-1896-97 > Part 14
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13 Trum. Pap., 234; Life and Times, 41.
14 Trum. Pap., 317; Life of Franklin, di. 51.
15 Trum. Pap., 36%, 447.
16 Trum. Pap., 358, 375.
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ments. Indeed, the substitution of "some of the more salu- tary herbs of" America, for the "expensive exotic" tea, was one of the first things which he thought of when the duties were imposed. 17 He would not believe "that any American of consequence could have been guilty of" evading the agree- ments; he asked why the people should not stop using, since the merchants must then stop importing; he hoped that the threat to make the agreements criminal would bring about this "much more effectual" agreement. As time went on, and the combinations against British goods, in spite of violations and evasions, and a temporary failure to reduce trade, which he at once acknowledged and accounted for, began finally to tell on both commerce and manufactures, he became almost pas- sionate in his plea for "union and firmness." "All depends upon it," he said: "the game . .. is in their own hands
. I must yet believe that there is wisdom, virtue, and patriotism enough in that country, not only to save it from ruin, but to fix its right. on a firm basis." 1 8
Johnson was distinguished for his moderation, but it was because, being a strong man, he could control strong feeling, not because he did not feel strongly. And in this correspond- ence he repeatedly shows himself capable of intense indigna- tion against tyrannical words and aets. Thus he denounces those who had told the ministers that the American opposi- tion was "a petty, desperate, dying faction," as " wretelied sycophants." The ministers, or some of their Englishadvisers. were malicious "madmen, who would wreak all their wicked wrath upon the colonies." He could even wish that some of them "might atone by their forfeited heads for the badness of their hearts."19
There is no room to doubt Johnson's devotion to America. but he was none the less devoted to the British crown. Colo- nial and imperial interests were both dear to him, and it is curious to observe how instinctively he speaks as an Englishi- man in the presence of annoyance or danger from without the
17 Trum. Pap., 236.
18 Trum. Pap., 298, 319, 384, 406, 423-4, 432-3.
19 Trum. Pap., 375, 377.
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empire. "Our eourt, it is said. is not upon good terms with that of Portugal, nor are we in the best humor with the Dutch." When France becomes insolent, and " the Span- iards, too, have been very saney." he writes, as if he had been one of the ministry which he denounced so fiercely, "we are therefore arming as all other powers of Europe have done before us . we are preparing to meet the threatening storm." He has even warm praise for the "firmness and forti- tude" of the government in its foreign policy. When what he calls "our rupture with Spain," seemed to foreshadow a general war, he said that "the spirited conduct of Lord North" had "given him great reputation," and his sympathies went with North in this matter against a parliamentary op- position which included those who were most friendly to America.2º And he could fairly expect the Connecticut gov- enors whom he addressed to share his feelings. Pitkin declared that the colonists idolized "the British constitution, government and nation." And as for Connecticut, he wrote: "Not a disloyal thought lurks in the breast of any one. "?1 Trumbull labored to the very last moment for peace, with freedom, within the empire. Fidelity at once to the local and to the central government was as possible under the imperial as under the federal system, and the former system was edu- cating Americans for the latter.
At the same time Johnson himself perceived that a separa- tion was more than probable, and while he did not desire it, he felt that it might be advantageous to the colonies. In 1769 he wrote to a friend in Connecticut : " If we were wise and could form some system of free government upon just princi- ples, we might be very happy without any connection with this country." But he feared that Americans would "fall into factions and parties," and "destroy one another," and so he pleaded for moderation on both sides.2? And he undoubt- edly still believed, as he did at the time of the Stamp aet con- gress, that colonial freedom was compatible with the existence
20 Trum. Pap., 385-6, 396, 456-7, 461-5, 489.
21 Trum. Pap., 283, 287.
22 Life and Times, 65.
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of a "supreme legislature," namely, parliament. Franklin, on the other hand, was gradually reaching the conviction that parliament, as then constituted, had no right to legislate for the colonies at all, and that the various states of the empire had at present no lawful bond of union except the king, as had formerly been the ease with regard to England and Seot- land. A political union of this sort. however, would have left the distant American states about as little members of the British empire as Hanover was. And even Franklin seemed to prefer such a union as had been.formed between England and Scotland, through a parliament representing both.23 But such a union, if we understand him literally, would have done away with the colonial assemblies: it would have been a con- solidation, turning the empire into a nation, with an ocean in the middle of it. The modern imperial system of Great Britain has taken very much the direction indicated in Frank- lin's conception of the old system. But, although parliament has not wholly relinquished its share in the government of the empire, the practical independence of the colonies in legisla- tion seems to be carrying them towards complete indepen- dence, something which neither Franklin nor Jolinson desired for the colonies of their day. The federal system of America. on the contrary, though its supreme legislature is really rep- resentative, on the whole more closely resembles that which . Johnson conceived of as then existing, and promises to last. by escaping botlt consolidation and separation. Johnson saw as clearly as Franklin that there had been not only an abuse but a usurpation of power by parliament, but he apparently saw more elearly than Franklin that a combination of general with local legislation belonged to the true constitution of an empire, and would best seeure its stability.
Our colonial agent's highest service to the American cause was rendered through his skillful performance of his proper task, the defence of the state rights of Connecticut. Profes- sor Johnston says that the government of this colony was kept "so free from erown control that it became really the exemplar
23 Life of Franklin, i. 515, 518, 567; si. GJ.
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of the rights at which all the colonies finally aimed."?+ They are all supposed to enjoy those rights under federal control, and it was your Fairfield County statesman who so guarded them for this commonwealth, and therefore for all her sisters, during the closing years of the colonial period, that the charter passed safely from the king to the people, and a "royal grant." wholly unchanged, was found worthy to be formally acknowl- edged by the most democratic of republies as its own work. The Charter Oak had been itself for the time transplanted from Hartford to Westminster. Johnson's task was undoubtedly far easier because he found that Connecticut was "rather a favorite colony." The genuine loyalty of the commonwealth thus had its reward, and her representative did his own work so well because he so completely represented her at her best, through his purity of character, his highly trained intelligence and his mastery of himself. In these qualities, as in courtesy and grace, he was such another envoy as she had had about at century before in the man who won the charter, the younger John Winthrop.
Johnson's management of the Mohegan case, with the help of the best (and most expensive) English counsel, was sub- stantially successful, and the danger which threatened the colonial constitution in that quarter was avoided. But he had much other work to do. Early in the year 1768 he had an encounter with Lord Hillsborough. The interview, which lasted about two hours, is described at some length by Mr. Bancroft,33 and I need give but an outline of the discussion. Hillsborough complained that the British ministry "seemed to have too little connection with" Connectieut. Johnson accounted for this chiefly by the " good order and tranquillity," of the colony, and by the fact that its constitution, not mak- ing it, like some provinces, directly dependent on the crown, left little occasion for troubling the home government with its affairs. Hillsborough then 'said that the colonial laws ought to be sent to the ministers to be reetified, if "amiss." Johnson politely assured him that he might have a copy "for
24 Connecticut, Pref. viil.
25 Hist. U. S., iv. 05-9.
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his private perusal," and as a book of reference for his clerks. But if he wished the laws transmitted for ministerial inspec- tion and approval, the charter provided against that, and the colony "would never submit to" it This drew an attack upon the charter as perhaps containing extravagant grants of power, which were necessarily void. Thus the power of abso- lute legislation "tended to the absurdity of" ereating "an independent state." Johnson answered that every eorpora- tion might make laws, the extent of its capacity depending on the nature of the corporation, in the present ease a colony. Hillsborough admitted the right to make by-laws, but he dis- tinguished between that and the wide range of legislation common in New England. A similar distinction was made not quite twenty years later in the constitutional convention, when Madison, in replying to Johnson's plea for the states as politieal societies, virtually ranked them with such corpora- tions as are only competent to pass by-laws. 26 Johnson called Connectieut a corporation in his discussion with Hillsborough, for so did the charter, and he was quite ready to acknowledge the incorporating power of the crown. But he pointed out that such a corporation as a colony "included in its idea full powers of legislation." and ought not to be elassed with corporations of a lower grade, like towns. Hillsborough now apparently gave up his contention that royal approval was necessary to give validity to Connecticut legislation. But he was sure that it should be regularly submitted to the privy council, that they might disapprove acts "repugnant to the law of England." for such aets were forbidden by the charter itself. Johnson parried this final thrust by denying that the power to deter- mine whether a law "was within that proviso or not" be- longed to any body except "a court of law, having jurisdic- tion of the matter" to which the aei related. This was much the same as saying that the constitutionality of a law of Con- neetient could only be settled judicially, through action brought in particular cases; an extremely different thing from pronouneing upon the laws as they were passed, and apart
26 Elliot's Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. v. (supplemen- tary ), 256.
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from any case arising under them, but extremely similar to the provision which Johnson helped to make in behalf of State rights, and against Madison, in 1787.2: At the latter period it was from interference on the part of the general legislature rather than on the part of the executive branch of the central government, that the local legislature was to be protected in its own sphere, but in either case the same local rights were assigned to the same guardianship, that of the judiciary. A striking feature of the American constitution was thus exhibited to a British minister by Dr. Johnson in . expounding the British constitution, while America was still part of the British empire. Johnson added that the validity of colonial laws might be settled in the colonial courts. com- ing, if necessary, on appeal, before the English courts, but before the courts alone, and not before the privy council. act- ing as a board of revision. Hillsborough continued to be afraid that the people of this commonwealth "were in danger of being too much a separate, independent state," and he did not get rid of the apprehension. But Jolinson seems to have convinced him that a "royal grant" had recognized at least one complete political society within the empire, and outside of Great Britain, while he had defined its constitutional posi- tion in terms which nearly describe that which it now holds in the federal union. 2×
Dr. Johnson more than once had oceasion to make a prac- tical use of the principles which he had laid down in this remarkable interview. In February, 1769, he warned Con- necticut against what he suspected to be a trap set for that colony and Rhode Island. An act of parliament had author- ized certain legislation by the American assemblies, which was to be subject to approval by the king in council. "I trust," he wrote, that "nobody will once think of passing an act to be transmitted here for approbation." ?? Before many months somebody transmitted an act for disapprobation. Connectient had suddenly set up a protective tariff in the shape of a duty
27 Elliot's Debates, v. 170-1, 481-2.
28 Trum. Pap., 253-62
20 Trum. Pap., 327-9.
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of five per cent. on all imports. including those brought directly from Great Britain. Lord Hillsborough, in great in- dignation, declared that, on the American theory, Connectieut was taxing the whole empire, and he was determined to bring the aet before the conneil. Johnson knew nothing about the motives for passing it, but he conjectured that it was designed to proteet local dealers against unfair competition on the part of men who did not stay long enough in Connecticut to be taxed, which provedl to be precisely the fact. This, he assured Hillsborough, was a very proper thing. and "well within the powers of the Assembly." After some three months of great anxiety he persuaded the minister to abandon his unpleasant intention about the act, and to give the assembly an opportu- nity to modify it. by excepting goods imported by English- men. This was eonceding a privilege which Connecticut does not now enjoy.3"
Before the agent's mind was at rest on this subject. (1770) . the colony was again threatened with extra judicial proceed- ings before the king in council. The Penn family addressed a petition to the king for the immediate removal of certain Connectient settlers from lands near Wilkes-Barre, and sought to make the colony a party in the case along with the Susque- hanna Company, which was making the settlement. Johnson believed that the colony had, under its charter, a title to the lands in question which ought not to be surrendered. But the company could defend its own title without the coopera- tion of Connecticut, and he was very unwilling to have the eharter, with its grant of a belt reaching to the Pneific ocean, brought before the ministry at so critical a moment. He therefore earnestly advised Trumball not to commit the col- ony, and he himself, by pursuing the sume policy, secured an opinion from the Board of Trade, of which Lord Hillsborough was president, to the effect that the ease was "entirely within the jurisdiction of" the Pennsylvanian courts. 31 It is quite likely that Johnson's former argument with Hillsborough in- flueneed this decision, and in any case he had saved the char- ter from some risk.
30 Trum. Pap. 887, 392-3, 397. 407. 419, 424, 443.
31 Trum. Pap., 413-6, 413, 447-8, 153-4.
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His last alarm on the subject of the charter perhaps caused him the greatest distress. He learned that a plan was formed, about the elose of the year 1770, not to abolish, but by so- called "regulations" to make nearly valueless, the charter of Massachusetts. He dreaded what might follow for Rhode Island and Connecticut. "When charters are called in ques- tion," he wrote, "we have certainly more to fear because we have more to lose, than any other people upon earth." He trusted that his own colony would continue to be so prudent and temperate "as not to endanger the most valuable privi- leges that people ever enjoyed." He held the traditional Con- necticut view, colored by neighborly prejudices, of the pru- denee and temper of Massachusetts, which in turn used to think Connectieut timid and selfish, though that view always became untenable after fighting began. And Johnson now regarded the proposed treatment of the sister colony as both impolitie and unrighteous, and very likely said as much to the ministers. Still, although he had some influence with Hills- borough. it is doubtful whether this appeared in the present abandonnent of the design against Massachusetts, for which Franklin himself. then her agent, declined to claim any credit. 3 : But Jolmson's influence is apparent in the assurance which the secretary gave him that whatever was done Connecticut should not be involved.33 He could feel that he was leaving the affairs of his own commonwealth in as good a condition as was then possible. As far as she was concerned he had successfully defended state rights, without seeming to impair the authority of the central government.
But he could not feel that his countrymen in general had been steadfast in the cause of liberty. About a year before his return, or in August, 1770, he was confounded by the news that the agreements against trade with England, on which he had declared that the fate of the colonies hung, had been abandoned except as regarded tea. He elung to the hope that the virtue of the people, on which he had throughout depended more than on that of the merchants, would be equal to the
32 Life of Franklin, ii. G.
31 Trum. Pap., 466-7, 470-1.
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sacrifice of refraining from consumption. But in the follow- ing March he wrote that goods were about going to America to the amount of more than a million sterling.34 This bad both pleased and strengthened the ministry, and he evidently believed that the proposed attack on Massachusetts had been encouraged by this sudden breaking down of the American defences. Moreover. the English opposition was utterly routed. and was, in Johnson's view, "equally destitute of principle with" the ministry, while scarcely more willing to concede their full rights to the colonists. He thought its leaders eap- able of little except "teasing the Administration," and as against them the latter probably had his sympathy. And the latter he describes as "in perfeet plenitude of power:" in spite of a popular outbreak which he briefly describes, almost his last letter declares the ministry to be "in perfeet peace."35
On Johnson's return in October, 1771, the Assembly of Con- nectieut thanked him "for his faithful service . his
constant endeavors to promote the general cause of American liberty, and his steady attention to the true interests of this colony in particular."36 His restoration to his old place in the council was a sufficient proof that he and the freemen of the commonwealth were in substantial agreement. Much as he had deplored the abandonment of the non-importation poliey, he was glad to see his countrymen peacefully inclined, and he hoped that discreet conduet on both sides would "per- fectly re-establish " harmony. 33 He certainly had not learned in less than a year to desire that the colonies should quietly aequiesee in arbitrary government, but he had, in common with other patriots, feared lest the two countries should "go on contending and fretting each other till" they should "be- come separate and independent empires."38 The attitude in which he found the Americans relieved him from this anxiety, while their continued refusal to import tea assured him that
34 Trum. Pap., 450, 479.
35 Trum. Pap., 474, 440, 482.
36 Life and Times, 86.
37 Bancroft's Hist. U. S., iv. 326. 38 Life and Times, 65.
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they had not renounced the principle of home rule. He knew that acts of violence would simply irritate not alone the min- istry but the English people, and his utter laek of confidence in the English opposition made him hopeless of help from that quarter, while he probably thought the military power of England irresistible. The few letters of this period which are in print show, on the one hand, that he loved justice and hated oppression as intensely as ever, and, on the other, that he still thought the English enemies of the administration "the friends of confusion :" and still believed the stability of the empire to demand not only an imperial executive but an imperial legislature. 39 The colonies probably contained no firmer adherent to the American cause. as Americans then understood it, namely, security for the rights of Englishinen under the British crown.
In the meantime the non-importation of tea had proved a more powerful weapon than Johnson had ventured to hope. It had brought the East India Company into great straits, and the company obtained from the folly of the ministers authority to do what the Americans refused to do, namely, to bring tea to the colonial ports. Mr. Bancroft says that if this permission had been accompanied by a removal of the duty it would have restored a good understanding. Nothing of the kind was thought of, and in December, 1773, the company's tea was thrown into Boston harbor. Johnson doubtless con- demned this act. but so did Washington and Franklin. Re- taliation eame in the shape of a bill closing the port of Bos- ton, and one of the best friends of America. Colonel Barre. voted for it, though he opposed the companion bill which practically annulled the Massachusetts charter. Johnson's moderation of temper never kept him from detesting tyranny even towards those whose course he may have thought injudi- cious, and we could have little doubt that he shared the indig- nation of his countrymen at these cruel enactments, even were there no other evidence to that effect. But we learn that the Episcopalians of Stratford joined in the contributions every- where made for the relief of Boston. They continued to act
39 Life and Times, 101-2, 207 (Ap.p.)
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in this spirit throughout the war, while Dr. Beardsley tells us that in "1774 not a man in Stratford was ready to dissent from revolutionary measures."+" Johnson's influence un- doubtedly appears in this attitude of the Stratford Episcopa- lians, but we need not infer that he personally approved of "revolutionary measures " And he was probably made very uneasy by the course which things were taking. In March, 1774. the Massachusetts assembly ordered the purchase of powder and cannon, and during the summer the militia were holding parades throughout the province. A similar bellige- rent disposition was showing itself elsewhere. Now John- son certainly thought that the British soldiers had no busi- ness in Boston, but they had not yet made open war, and he would naturally fear that if the colonists armed themselves they would be tempted to strike the first blow. Such an ap- prehension perhaps accounts for the fact that in October he resigned his commission as lieutenant-colonel of the fourth Connecticut regiment, of which he had previously been major.+1 Various reasons might have led to this step, but neither lack of patriotism nor lack of courage was among them. and it was such a step as he would have been likely to take if he were seriously afraid that the colonies would plunge into an offensive war, having either the dismemberment of the empire, or the loss of colonial freedom as its probable issue. It would indieate no unwillingness to take part in defending the colonies, if attacked, even against the army of his sove. reign. In the same year he declined an appointment to rep- resent the colony in the first continental congress, and though he had a good excuse, he was certainly not sorry that he had one. The congress, however, upon the whole, pursued his own poliey, and showed a sineere wish for peace and the unity of the empire. He could still feel that he was not essentially at varianee with the majority of his sober-minded countrymen.
And there were enough equally sober-minded men in Con- nectient to send Dr. Jolinson once more to the upper house
40 Orcutt's Ilistory of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, It. I . 373; Beardsley's History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut, i. 310.
41 Coon. Col. Rec., XIV. 221, 231.
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of the legislature in 1775. Furthermore, the legislature, much against his own wishes, and a good deal to the annoy- ance of Massachusetts, made him, towards the end of April, one of the bearers of a letter from Governor Trumbull to Gor- enor Gage, complaining of what the writer was inclined to re- gard as "a most unprovoked attack upon the lives and prop- erty of His Majesty's subjects," and pleading for a suspension of hostilities. Even at this date, when the war had begun at Lexington and Concord. the people of Connecticut abhorred "the idea of taking up arms against the troops of their Sove- reign," although, on "the principle of self-defense," they were resolved to fight, if necessary, either for themselves or for "their brethren."4? As far as appears, Johnson might have written such a letter himself. The mission of course was futile, and peaceful Connecticut was soon in thickest of the fight. It was still. however, a defensive war, proseeuted in behalf of the rights of Englishmen within the empire. Dr. Dwight tells us that the thought of independence was derided by zealous whigs in the colony even after the battle of Bunker Hill. 43 And Johnson, however much he regretted the neces- sity of foreible resistance to invasion, and however little he hoped for a successful issue, continued to aet as a member of the Connecticut government during the whole of the year 1775. when the commonwealth was doing its utmost against the king's troops and fortresses and ships. And when the king declared the colonists rebels. Johnson shared the re- proach, along with Trumbull and Israel Putnam and Ethan Allen.
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