USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 13
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At the close of Dudley's administration the last two groups were about equally divided in the House, while the Council favored the last scheme as the lesser of two evils. It so hap- pened that the Boston members and the popular leader, Elisha Cooke, belonged to the land bank party. In the struggles against the Prerogative, Cooke like his father, of the same name, took a leading part. He was a man of means and posi- tion, who chose the role of popular leader against the Crown. Consequently, the appointment of Shute, who had been won
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over by the enemies of the land bank, exasperated them against the Governor and gave the Governor an unfortunate start,- especially since those in favor of the public issue had at length prevailed. This matter of paper money has large historical significance in the subsequent political history of the province; for the identification of Shute with the party opposed to the land bank secured him, from the outset, the hostility of the powerful Cooke and his followers. The lower and debtor classes, usually unsound in their views of financial matters, were all for paper money-lots of it; upon the whole, they preferred that it should be issued by the Province rather than by private enterprise. Hence the discussion of paper money was charged with dynamite for the new Governor.
CONTROVERSIES WITH SHUTE (1716-1723)
Soon after his arrival, Shute found that the Assembly was attacking the Prerogative upon two points, one much more obvious than the other. According to the Charter, all timber of a certain size was reserved as masts for the royal navy; but the settlers in Maine, as well as certain capitalists in Bos- ton, paid no attention to this right of the Crown, and were engaged in a hot fight with the royal Surveyor General at Shute's arrival. The Governor espoused the official side, and Cooke took up the cause of the Maine settlers. It appears that Shute had come over from England with elaborate instruc- tions for the strengthening of the Prerogative, which boded ill for the peace of the Colony, in view of the temper of the House under the aggressive leadership of the younger Cooke. Shute, while no fool, was like most military men, stiff and unpliable ; he rejected Cooke when chosen Councillor, thereby widening the breach with the House. Soon after, apparently in accord with his instructions, he caused a bill to be introduced for controlling the press, which the House refused to pass; and feeling ran high on both sides. The next year (1719) Shute vetoed the House's choice of Cooke as its Speaker and thereby raised a great stir as to whether, under the Charter, he possessed this veto power. In retaliation, Shute saw his salary grant reduced and his negotiations with the Eastern Indians negatived.
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BREAKDOWN OF SHUTE
In 1721 the House elected its Speaker and sent Shute a mes- sage announcing the choice and that the Speaker was "now sitting in the chair." Both sides were aroused and the House obstinately refused to vote any salary or allowances to the Governor, thereby creating a desperate situation, as the East- ern Indians were attacking the frontier settlements of Maine, which were without adequate protection. Since neither side would yield, the Governor could do nothing but send an ac- count of his trouble over the speakership to England and ask for instructions. Another quarrel arose because the House took it upon itself to adjourn without permission. At this point the House, realizing that it had gone too far, acknowl- edged that it did not possess the power of self-adjournment .. On the other hand it strenuously denied the Governor's right to assemble the House outside of Boston, without its consent.
It would be wearisome to enumerate all the petty quarrels between Governor Shute and the Assemblies; but two other powers not conferred by the Charter were seized by the As- sembly and were thereafter never fully relinquished. The Charter provided that money should be raised by the Lower House, to be disbursed by the Governor and Council. The Assembly now tried to direct how the money raised was to be expended by designating for what purposes it was to be used. Shute again protested, and again gave way. In addition, the House sought to control the military operations in Maine, by directing how the money raised for the war was to be em- ployed. It took upon itself to direct the field commander, Colonel Walton, in a manner contrary to the orders of the Gov- ernor. It refused to vote any supplies for the war, until Colo- nel Walton was removed for not obeying the multiple com- mands. This was a clear usurpation of power on the part of the House, but poor Walton never received pay for his serv- ices and was finally removed altogether.
BREAKDOWN OF SHUTE (1721-1723)
The Crown upheld its Governor on the question of the Speakership and later issued an Explanatory Charter (1728), whereby the Governor was stated to have the power to nega- tive the choice of Speaker and the sole power to adjourn the
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House. Another act of aggression on the part of the Assem- bly just after the arrival of Shute mentioned above, was an act imposing duties, not only on West Indian goods and wines, but also upon English manufactures and a duty of tonnage on English ships, a very bold move. Shute at that time allowed himself to assent to this bill, but he received instructions there- after to give all encouragement to English manufactures. Ac- cordingly, when the bill came up the succeeding year, he re- fused his assent unless the duty on English vessels was left out. All that the House would agree to do was to alter the word English to European, which he refused to accept; and the House then sought, by rather questionable means, to make it appear that the Council concurred with them in this matter.
In 1723 Shute, utterly exasperated with the Assembly, which withstood him in all things both great and small, suddenly re- turned to England to lay the case before the Board of Trade, and if necessary before Parliament. The House, which had refused to vote Shute his proper salary or sufficient money to carry on the executive functions of the government, at a time when the Eastern Indians were ravaging the Maine settle- ments, readily voted substantial sums to the colonial agents in England to defend their cause.
Colonel Shute was a well meaning military man, without much tact or diplomacy in handling a free assembly. Upright and resolved to defend his master's rights, he succeeded in bringing on a hopeless impasse on all points, thus paralyzing the executive arm of the government. As an incident in these quarrels, the freedom of the press in Massachusetts was pretty firmly established; and the House had made some progress in acquiring the power of directing the expenditure of money voted. The struggle had shown conclusively that the money power legally vested in the House, gave it a tremendous ad- vantage, which was used to good effect. Experience had demonstrated that the salary of a refractory Governor could be held up, in order to compel him to assent to popular meas- ures ; or else go without it and also lack the money necessary to run the executive branch of the government. When a Royal Governor was bound on one side by his instructions and on the other depended for his salary upon the good will of the House, his lot was indeed a hard one. Throughout these quarrels the
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Council generally supported the Governor against the House, which had on all occasions sought to increase its own power at the expense of the smaller body. Among other usurpations was a vote that under the Charter, eight Councillors would make a quorum outside regular sessions; but that during ses- sions a majority of the whole twenty eight was necessary.
In apportioning the blame for this deadlock, it must be ad- mitted that Shute was unyielding and undiplomatic in his re- lations with the Assembly; but also that the Assembly was trying and exasperating, and at times exceedingly obstinate, and wanting in financial sagacity. It is to the credit of the Home Government that it constantly tried to curb the evil of the unrestrained issue of bills of credit. It was not conducive to the good name of the Assembly, when asked by the Gover- nor what steps it proposed to take to redeem the bills when they fell due, to answer that as the bills had been issued by a previous Assembly it felt no responsibility about them; and that, if it seemed best, it would repudiate them. Nor did it redound to the Assembly's financial sagacity, when it informed the Governor that the value of the bills depended not upon the promise to redeem, but on the fact that they were accepted as legal tender.
GOVERNOR DUMMER (1723-1728)
Upon the departure of Governor Shute in 1723 Lieutenant Governor William Dummer, a native of Newbury and a mem- ber of an old and distinguished Massachusetts family, took his place. A short period of quiet succeeded the bitter strife that had marked Shute's five years' residence in the colony, the bitterest, says Hutchinson, since the Antinomian trouble in 1636. The Governor and the Assembly locked horns upon a great variety of matters, some important, others trivial. It would seem that either consciously or unconsciously the House had two objects in view: first to ascertain what its power actually was under the comparatively new charter ; and second, to see how far the Home Government would permit encroach- ments upon the powers reserved. It now had to await the result of the complaints of the Governor and the effect of its own defense before the authorities in England.
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The result was soon known; for the British authorities con- demned the stand taken by the Assembly, upheld the Governor and issued the Explanatory Charter above referred to. Yet the British Government took no active steps to enforce its own rulings; and the colony, especially the leaders of the op- position, quickly concluded that no Governor would be effec- tively supported from England. Hence they grew bolder and more resolute, especially since they had discovered the great advantage that the control of the money power gave them.
Although their "Memorials" and "Addresses" abounded in expressions of loyalty to the Crown, the Home Government had no illusions as to whither matters were tending. As early as 1716 a report to the Board of Trade contains the following prediction : "They will be able in a little while to live without Great Britain, and their ability, joined to their inclination, will be of very ill consequence."
A few years later at the time of the troubles of Governor Burnet (1729) the Board expressed its disapprobation at "The repeated attempts the Assemblies of this province have made towards the shaking off of their dependence to the Crown and their dependence to their mother country." Nevertheless the Home Government was groping for a solution and anxious not to infringe upon the liberties of the Colonists as British subjects; hence it let things drift until too late to stem the rising tide of independence.
The House, after the departure of Governor Shute, although it was supposed under the Charter in such a case to vote half the usual salary to the Governor and half to the Lieutenant Governor, made no provision for either. It further tried to interfere with the conduct of military operations by pushing the demand for the removal of Colonel Walton, who had been called by the House from his command at the front to answer its charges against him. Dummer, anxious as he was to avoid controversy, gave it to be understood that as Comamnder-in- Chief he could not tolerate such an encroachment upon his undoubted rights. He demanded that he be addressed prop- erly, which was at once done. Still the members persisted in their attack upon Walton, until they compelled him to resign.
The issues of paper money now caused trouble, as the in- structions from England forbade the issuance of further bills
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From the portrait in the Mansion House, Dummer Academy, South Byfield WILLIAM DUMMER
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GOVERNOR BURNET
of credit except for the necessary support of the Government, and then not in excess of £30,000. The House, notwithstand- ing this direction attempted to authorize the issue of £50,000 in bills of credit, which the Lieutenant Governor properly re- fused to allow without a suspending clause. He at length per- mitted an issue for the support of the government, but no salaries were voted. The period during which Dummer exer- cised authority, while on the whole quiet, was marked by a resolute consolidation of the powers assumed by the House during the administration of Governor Shute, and a strength- ening of the Assembly's control of the purse.
A slight incident during Dummer's administration showed how, under the new charter, with its fuller franchise, the political power of the old theocracy had utterly passed away. This result is the best answer to those persons who maintain that the government under the old Charter of 1628 represented the will of the great mass of the people. In 1725 the Congregational clergy proposed a synod in the good old style. Though this proposition was approved by the Lieutenant Governor and the Council, it was at first disapproved by the Assembly. The acceptance of this synod gave offence in Eng- land, where the pretensions of the Congregational clergy were not popular ; hence Dummer received an instruction to stop the whole business. Thus finally ended the last attempt of the Massachusetts clergy to hold a synod.
GOVERNOR BURNET (1728-1729)
Shute's intention had been to return from England with in- creased powers; but the death of George I in 1727 put an end to his plans and a new Governor was appointed. William Burnet was a son of the famous Whig Bishop of Salisbury and a godson of William of Orange. His family and his Whig connections were calculated to make him popular in Massachusetts ; and he had been a successful governor of New York and New Jersey. He was a man of amiable disposition, polished manners and witty conversation, a man well calculated to make a good impression upon the gentry of the Province; but he fared no better than his predecessor. The Home Gov- ernment realized, at last, that the crux of the situation lay in
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the question of the governor's salary. Hence Burnet had strict instructions to insist upon the General Court settling a fixed salary of £1,000 per annum upon the Royal Governor. This he insistently demanded and the House as obstinately refused; the whole of his short administration was taken up with a long wrangle upon this point, as neither would give way.
The Assembly realized that its power depended largely upon keeping control of the governor's salary and flatly refused to obey the injunctions from overseas. An attempt was made to bribe Burnet into acquiescense by offering him £1,700 at one time, an offer raised at last to £6,000. True to his in- structions, he resolutely refused to be tempted, and the House would not recede from its resolution not to grant a fixed salary. It even declined to listen to the suggestion of the Council to vote a fixed salary for his term of office; and a deadlock was reached. It appears that the Home Government was begin- ning to give way before the resolute front of this Assembly of small farmers, inasmuch as secret instructions were sent to the Governor permitting him to accept the grant, provided a fixed salary was also settled on him for the remaining term of his administration.
Before he had reached the point of proposing this alterna- tive, he died from a cause which sheds light on the primitive conditions of travel at that time. He caught a chill when his coach was overset into the water, while coming from Cam- bridge: his demise was doubtless hastened by his vexation with the Assembly. The result of the controversy was to strengthen the control of the Assembly over the money power ; it paved its way to a final victory in the next administration.
During Burnet's brief rule several minor controversies arose over the right of the Governor to call the House to assemble outside of Boston. He was anxious to get them out of the atmosphere of that town, which was bitterly hostile to him. When Burnet removed the House to Salem, he wittily re- marked that he had deliberated as to whether he should con- vene the General Court at Concord or Salem.
Considerable complaint was also made over his increase of the fees charged on the clearance of shipping. While this was an innovation, it was not unlawful, and the Governor simply followed the custom and legal practice in New York. His
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lack of salary was ample justification for seeking a way out of a legal fight. The House was steadily fighting the salary question through colonial agents in England; and, in this instance, the Council refused at first to support the House in its contention and refused to authorize the payment of the agents. At last a compromise was reached. After his death the Assembly voted him a splendid funeral, and after many years paid his widow some of the salary due him.
GOVERNOR BELCHER (1730-1741)
The sudden death of Governor Burnet left Dummer in charge as Lieutenant Governor once more; but in that office he was soon succeeded by William Tailer. As usual, the inter- val between the death of Burnet and the appointment of his successor was one of comparative quiet, the Lieutenant Gover- nor merely insisting upon a fixed salary, in accordance with the Royal instructions, which the House as usual refused.
The ministry now determined upon a new course, the ap- pointment of a native of the Province and a member of the opposition as the next Royal Governor. Jonathan Belcher, a man of pleasing manners and good education, supplemented by foreign travel, was the son of a wealthy Boston merchant. He was pliant by nature, somewhat of a timeserver and very selfish. His ruling passion was a love of personal prestige and a desire for office to gratify his vanity. Starting in political life as a Prerogative man, he soon joined the opposition for the purpose of increasing his importance among his fellow citi- zens, and became a leader of that hotbed of democracy, the Boston Town Meeting. In the House he was active in the op- position to Governor Burnet; and at the death of Burnet he was in England as one of the House's two agents to justify their course before the Board of Trade.
He was fired with a desire for the chief magistracy of his native province, purely from personal vanity, for as he well knew, the post was no bed of roses for the man who had the misfortune to occupy it. Accordingly, from being one of the opposition, he suddenly veered around, became a strong up- holder of the Prerogative and made great promises of what he would accomplish if given the office. Yet upon his arrival in
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Boston in 1730, he fared no better than his predecessors and his term of office, lasting over ten years (1730-1741), was marked by bitter quarrels between the Assembly and the Gov- ernor.
Three major points of controversy besides a number of minor ones mark his tenure of office: the quarrel over the salary, in which the House won a marked victory; the contro- versy over the House's attempt to audit and direct the expendi- ture of money granted, with the incidental disagreement over the province defenses; and the question of paper money. Be- sides these came wrangles over the Land Bank; the Assembly's control of the province Agent; the House's attempt to enlarge the members' salaries ; the disapproval of the Speaker ; and the attempt of the House to appoint committees to function out- side of sessions. Belcher was a shrewd politician and by the introduction of the spoils system and the appointment to office of some of the chief leaders of the Country party, he succeeded in abating their zeal for liberty; the lovers of freedom were edified by seeing that sturdy patriot, Elisha Cooke, become suddenly tamed by an appointment to a judgeship.
FINANCIAL ISSUES (1730-1741) -
The wrangle over the fixed salary went on until Belcher, anxious for his money, succeeded in getting his instructions so modified as to permit him to accept the annual grants made; and so the House virtually won the long wrangle over the Governor's salary. It is interesting that the Governor, being paid in the depreciated bills, never received the full salary due him; and the House distinctly declared that while voting him a sum approximating £1,000 sterling, it had no intention of complying with the instructions from England.
During Shute's administration the House had begun to designate the purposes for which money raised was to be used; and also to audit public expenditures, claiming that the clause in the Charter authorizing it to raise money for carrying on the government gave this right, although the Charter provided that money was to be expended by the Governor "by and with the advice and consent of the Council." In accordance with his instructions Belcher endeavored to check this inroad upon
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PAPER MONEY CONTROVERSY
the Prerogative, with the result that, as the Assembly would vote no money except for purposes designated by it, and as the Governor consistently vetoed these bills, the Province treasury remained empty. There were no funds to provide for the upkeep of the military forces or the fortifications, a very necessary expense, although for the moment the Province was enjoying comparative quiet as regarded Indian aggres- sions. Notwithstanding the peace between England and France, there was no telling when war might break out again. During this controversy the House laid down the rule that the Charter, (as it chose to interpret it) had precedence of authority over all royal instructions. The Home Government disallowed this interpretation; and at length supplies were voted; but the wrangle recommenced with the new Assembly, which had no intention of abandoning its stand. When Belcher went out of office in 1741 the problem was still unsolved. In this controversy the Council was inclined, as was usual, to agree with the House.
PAPER MONEY CONTROVERSY (1740-1742)
The Governor's instruction against unlimited emission of paper money, a thoroughly reasonable instruction, also caused much bitterness. The year 1741 was approaching, when many of the old bills would come due. Therefore in 1740 the British Government tightened up the former instruction, by forbidding even the issue, without a suspension clause, of £30,- 000 to carry on the necessary expenses of government. The House was determined to authorize a new issue of bills for £50,000. Upon this question the Governor had the support of the Council, all men of property. As was natural, the value of the bills rapidly depreciated, to the great detriment of sound currency. As the majority of the lower and debtor classes were in favor of the depreciated paper money, the efforts of the Home Government in behalf of sound finance, and to pre- vent a further depreciation of almost worthless bills, caused a deep and lasting resentment; and another grievance against English tyranny was stored up by the masses.
Despairing of being able to secure an emission of bills of credit by the Province, the land bank scheme was revived upon
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the personal credit of nearly 800 persons, most of whom were men of mean estate. The Governor, not only as a representa- tive of the Crown, but also as a conservative Boston merchant, violently opposed the land bank, and thereby incurred the enmity of some considerable persons, who favored the scheme. Intrigues were set on foot in England, which in their crooked and downright dishonesty would be hard to equal, as a result of which the Governor's friends in London were alienated from him and his removal was secured. The authorities at home, doubtless urged on by the London merchants who had accounts owing in the Province, brought the matter of the Land Bank to the attention of Parliament; and an act was passed extending the "Bubble Act" to the Colonies and declar- ing that it had always applied to them. In this way the dissolu- tion of the famous Land Bank was forced, and many of its promoters were ruined, among them the elder Samuel Adams, whose son became filled with deep and lasting hatred of Eng- land.
The action of Parliament, while justified by all laws of sound finance was an exceedingly unwise interference with local affairs, and the ex post facto declaration was most un- just. This act, however laudable in its intention, engendered a deep and lasting resentment among the poorer sort against English interference, and was another and important element in the rising estrangement between Massachusetts and the mother country. So high did the feeling of resentment run that an armed rebellion was at one time feared by the author- ities.
EFFECT OF THE FRENCH WARS (1741-1760)
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