USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Municipal history of the town and city of Boston during two centuries : from September 17, 1630, to September 17, 1830 > Part 43
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An act of this kind would also relieve the city of Boston from the effect of that monstrous financial anomaly, whereby twelve men, chosen individually in wards, with little consideration by the voters of the great amounts of money placed at their disposal, and of their adaptation to distribute it, are invested annually with power to expend from twenty-eight to thirty thousand dollars out of the publie treasury, at their discretion, with no other accountability than to one another. The annual publication of their receipts and expenditures, which they call accounting to their fellow-citizens, has, in fact, no one element of effective accountability.
Under the town government, it was otherwise. There every inhabitant had
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the right and the power, in public town-meeting, to demand explanations and specifications, concerning the modes and principles of expenditure. Under the city, no human being has such right or power, it being denied even to the City Council ; and, although it naturally belongs to them, they have hitherto been deterred from attempting to obtain it, from causes well known and already intimated.
(L. Page 206.)
AN ADDRESS | DELIVERED AT THE UNANIMOUS REQUEST OF BOTH BRANCHIES OF THE CITY COUNCIL ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1826, IT BEING THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, BY JOSIAH QUINCY, MAYOR OF THE CITY.
ON the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of our country, -on the great day of our fathers' glory, - we assemble to speak concerning their virtues, and to tell of labors and sacrifices by which they gave existence to our nation.
More than half the term allotted in the ordinary course of Providence to the longest human life has elapsed since that event. Those whose age or experience guide the affairs of the present time were then children or youths; witnesses, without being partakers of that struggle. How natural and suitable is it, on such an anniversary, for the fathers of the present day to speak concerning the fathers of former days to one another and to their children, who are destined to be the fathers of the age which is to come !
We are, then, fellow-citizens, assembled, not to take part in a light and vain show, but to perform a solemn and somewhat a religious duty. Parents and children, we have come to the altar of our common faith, not like the Carthagi- nian, to swear enmity to another nation, but, in the spirit of obedience and under a sense of moral and religious obligation, to inquire what it is to fulfil well our duty to ourselves and our posterity. And while we pass before our eyes in long array the outspread images of our fathers' virtues, let us strive to excite in our own bosoms and enkindle in each other's that intense and saered zeal by which their patriotism was animated and refined. Fifty years after the occurrence of the greatest of our national events, we gather with our children around the tombs of our fathers, as we trust, -- and may Heaven so grant ! - fifty years hence, those children will gather around ours, in the spirit of gratitude and honor, to contemplate their glory ; to seek the lessons suggested by their exam- ple ; and to examine the principles on which they laid the foundations of their country's prosperity and greatness.
1 This work having been substituted, under circumstances the text explains, for one of the orations annually delivered by the appointment of the Mayor and. Aldermen on the fourth of July, has been naturally published with that name,. and usually regarded in that light.
It was, however, solicited as an address to the City Comeil and inhabitants of the city, accepted as an official duty, and exeented in a style adapted to the relation in which the writer stood, and in couformity with the vote of the City Council.
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But if, as Americans, it be natural and suitable to consecrate this day in our affections, how much more as citizens of Boston, -inhabitants of that city known through the world as the cradle of American liberty, - standing as we do under the canopy of that sacred temple,1 which was honored, in the most try- ing times of our Revolution, by the boldest breathings of our chicfest patriots ; which was polluted in the most disastrous times by the war horse, which neighed and stabled in this sanctuary ; surrounded as we are by the direct descendants of those who were first and most fearless in the day of severest trial !
Where shall the memory of the great men of our Revolution be honored, if it be not in this city, in this temple, and in this assembly ?
What future age, what distant region, hearing of the American Revolution, shall not also hear of " Faneuil Hall " and of the " Old South," where the carly spirit of American liberty stood in dignity, fidelity, and fearlessness, while sen- tries, with fixed bayonets, were at our State House doors; while Boston was but a garrison -its islands and harbors possessed by a vindictive and indignant foe ; its trade suspended by British cruisers; famine threatened by British edicts ; and the blood of its slaughtered citizens flowed in its streets!
In what land, where the American name is known, are not, and shall not for- ever be, known, the names of those citizens of Boston, who were the strength and lights of their own time, and the eternal glory of their country, - Adams and Hancock, and Otis, and Warren, and others of scarcely less celebrity ?
Especially shall he not be forgotten, now or ever, that ancient citizen of Bos- ton, that patriarch of American independence, of all New England's worthies, on this great day the sole survivor? He, indeed, oppressed by years, sinking under the burdens of decaying nature, hears not our publie song or voice of praise or ascending prayer. But the sounds of a nation's joy, rushing from our cities, ringing from our valleys, echoing from our hills, shall break the silence of his aged ear ; the rising blessings of grateful millions shall visit, with a glad light, his fading vision, and flush the last shades of his evening sky with the reflected splendors of his meridian brightness.
How peculiarly and imperiously incumbent, then, is it on us on this day, in this place and in this assembly, to speak together concerning the glory of our ancestors ; to analyze that glory ; and to inquire what it is to deserve, and what it is to disgrace those ancestors !
When we speak of the glory of our fathers, we mean not that vulgar renown to be attained by physical strength, nor yet that higher fame to be acquired by intellectual power. Both often exist without lofty thought or pure intent or
1 The Old South Church.
2 John Adams, the patriot here alluded to, expired at about five o'clock on this day ; and Thomas Jefferson, another patriot of the same period, also expired at about one o'clock on the same afternoon.
Thus two of the most distinguished statesmen of the United States, both mem- bers of the Committee of Congress who drafted the Declaration of American Independence, and who both signed that instrument; both of whom had been for many years Ministers of the United States at several European courts; both of whom had held successively the offices of Vice-President and President of the United States, finished their mortal career on the fourth of July, 1826; it being the fiftieth anniversary of that most glorious and happy event for them- selves and their country, - the Declaration of American Independence.
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generous purpose. The glory which we celebrate was strictly of a moral and religions character, - righteous as to its ends, just as to its means. The Ameri- can revolution had its origin, neither in ambition, nor avarice, nor envy, nor in any gross passion ; but in the nature and relation of things, and in the thence resulting necessity of separation from the parent State. Its progress was limited by that necessity. During the struggle, our fathers displayed great strength and great moderation of purpose. In difficult times they conducted with wisdom. In doubtful times, with firmmess. In perilous, with courage. Under oppressive trials, erect. Amidst great temptations, usedneed. In the dark hour of dan- ger, fearless. In the bright honr of prosperity, faithful. It was not the instant feeling and pressure of the arm of despotism that roused them to resist, but the principle on which that arm was extended. They could have paid the stamp-tax and the tea-tax, and the other impositions of the British government, had they been increased a thonsand-fold. But payment acknowledged the right; and they spurned the consequences of that acknowledgment. In spite of those acts they could have lived and happily, and bought and sold, and got gain, and been at ease. But they would have held those blessings on the tenure of dependence on a foreign and distant power, at the merey of a king or his minions, or of con- cils in which they had no voice, and where their interests could not be repre- sented, and were little likely to be heard. They saw that their prosperity in such case would be precarious; their possessions uncertain ; their ease inglorious. Brit above all they realized that those burdens, though light to them, would, to the coming age, - to us, their posterity, - be heavy, and, probably, insupport- able. Reasoning on the inevitable increase of interested imposition upon those who are without power and have none to help, they foresaw that, sooner or later, desperate struggles must come. They preferred to meet the trial in their own times, and to make the sacrifices in their own persons. They were willing themselves to endure the toil and to ineur the hazard, that we and on descend- ants, - their posterity, - might reap the harvest, and enjoy the increase.
Generous men ! exalted patriots ! inmortal statesmen ! For this deep, moral, and social affection, for this elevated self-devotion, this noble purpose, this bold daring, the multiplying myriads of your posterity, as they thicken along the Atlantic coast, from the St. Croix to the Mississippi, as they spread backwards to the lakes, and from the lakes to the mountains, and from the mountains to the western waters, shall, on this day, annually, in all future time, as we at this hour, come up to the temple of the Most High, with song and anthem and thanksgiv- ing and choral symphony and hallelujah, to repeat your names, to look stead- fastly on the brightness of your glory ; to trace its spreading rays to the points from which they emanate ; and to seek, in your character and conduct, a prac- tical ilhistration of public duty, in every ocenring, social exigence.
In the rapid view I am compelled to take of the gemius and character of our revolution, I shall chiefly fix my eye on this State, town, and vicinity. Let other States and cities celebrate with due honors the great men whose lights cluster in their peculiar sky. Massachusetts has a constellation of her own, exceeded by none in brightness, yielding to none in power, surpassed by none in influence, during the first stages of the Revolutionary struggle. In this State and in this metropolis were exhibited, among the earliest, those generous virtues and that noble daring which electrified the Continent.
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If it be asked in what the peculiar glory of our fathers in that day consisted, this is my answer. It consisted in perfectly-performed duty, according to the measure of that perfection which is attributable to things human. Now, real glory, when strictly analyzed and reduced to its constituent principle, with all its tinsel and dross separated, will be found to consist, and to consist only in truth. The glory of contemplation is truth to nature.' The glory of action is truth to the relations in which man is placed, - perfect fulfilment of all the obligations which result from the condition of things allotted to him by Providence.
In this point of view, the glory of our fathers at the revolution may be stated in detail to consist in being true to their ancestors, true to themselves, true to their posterity, and, above all, in being true to virtue and liberty.
Our fathers, at the Revolution, were true to their ancestors ; maintaining their principles, obeying their precepts, copying their example.
The Revolution of 1776 is called, and justly, a mighty struggle for independ- ence. But it was neither greater, bolder, nor more ardnons, than the emigra- tion of the first settlers to New England; nor was there inenrred in it more hazard, nor displayed in any of its events, a more determined spirit of independ- ence, than were incurred and displayed by the immediate descendants of those settlers, - the direct progenitors of the authors of our revolution.
Time would fail me, were I to attempt to maintain this position by historical references. One or two striking evidences of fact and opinion mist suffice.
The emigration itself of our ancestors was, in truth, only a mighty struggle for independence. According to the gemius of the age, and the particular bias of our ancestors' minds, their motive took the aspect of a strong desire for a higher religious freedom and a purer form of religious worship. It is impossible, how- ever, not to perecive that even this desire was only a mode, under which existed an intense and all-absorbing spirit of civil freedom. In the nature of things, it could not possibly have been otherwise. They fled from the persecutions of the British hierarchy. Now the strength of the hierarchy was in the nerve of the secular arm. It was that odious centanr, not fabulous, church and state, which drove them for refuge into the wilderness. This monster, with a political head and an ecclesiastical body, they hated and feared ; representing their emigration and sufferings under the familiar type of the woman of the Apocalypse, who fled " into the wilderness, to a place prepared of God, from the face of the beast."
We are apt to view our ancestors of the first and second generations in the light of enthusiasts. Now, if by this term is meant, according to its usual import, " men, who through a vain confidence in heaven, neglect the use of human means," there never existed a class of men less entitled to that appellation than our fathers. Of all men, they were the most practical. Their whole history, the colleges, schools, churches, all the institutions they founded, constitute one unbroken series of examples of the wise and happy use of human means. As to their opinions, take, instead of a multitude which might be adduced, a single example. In that famous work entitled " Faithful Advice to the Churches of New England," sent ont into the world under the auspices of our fathers, having the signatures of both the Mathers, Davenport, Cohnan, and others, there is the following remarkable vindication of the use of human learning in religion, urged with their characteristic acuteness.
" No man ever decried learning without being an enemy to religion, whether
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he knew it or no. When our Lord chose fishermen to be ministers, he would not send them forth until they had been several years under his tuition ; (a bet ter than the best in any college under heaven) and then, also, he miraculously furnished them with more learning than any of ns, by seven years hard study, can attain unto."
It would be easy also to adduce abundant evidence of the free opinions enter- tained by the first settlers, relative to the right of resistance to kings and to per- sonal and colonial freedom, by quotations from approved authors of that period. A single extract from the writings of Nathaniel Ward, the first clergyman of the town of Ipswich, in this vicinity, will sufficiently manifest the temper and spirit of our ancestors in that age on those points. This writer was so highly esteemed by our ancestors, that he was employed in 1639 by the General Court of Massa- chusetts to draft that code, consisting of one hundred laws, called " the body of liberties " of the Colony. In an cecentric, but highly popular work in that day, published by him in 1647, entitled " The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in Ame- rica," the contest, then carrying on between the King and Parliament, is repre- sented under the similitude of a controversy between royal prerogative (majestas imperii) and popular liberty (sahis populi) and is thus stated in the quaint lan- guage of that day : -
We hear that Majestas Imperii hath challenged Sulus Populi into the field; the one fighting for prerogatives, the other defending liberties. If Salus Populi began, surely it was not that Salus Populi I left in England. That Salus Populi was as manmerly a Salus Populi as need be: If I be not much deceived, that Salus Populi suffered its nose to be held to the grindstone till it was ground to the gristle ; and yet grew never the sharper, for anght I could discern. I think that since the world began, it was never storied that Salus Populi began with Mujestas Imperi, unless Majestas Imperii first unharbored it and hunted it to a stand, and then it must turn head and live, or turn tail and die. Common- wealths cost as mich in the making as crowns ; and if they be well made, would yet ontsel an ill-fashioned crown in any market overt, if they be well-vouched.
" But preces and lachrymie are the people's weapons ; so are swords and pis- tols, when God and Parliament bid them arm. Prayers and tears are good weapons for them that have nothing but knees and eyes ; but most men have teeth and nails. If subjects must fight for their kings against other kingdoms when their kings will, I know no reason but they may fight against their kings for their own kingdoms when Parliament say they may and must. But Parlia- ment must not say they must until God says they may."
The bold spirit of liberty which characterized the first settlers of New Eng- land cannot be too highly appreciated by their posterity. Neither are their wisdom and prudence in maintaining their liberties, less subjects of admiration and applause. What state paper exists more solemn or comprehensive than that memorable order, by which the General Court of Massachusetts, in 1660, caused a committee to be raised to consider the consequences to their liberties to be anticipated from the restoration of Charles II. ?
" Forasmuch as the present condition of our affairs, in matters of the highest concerment, calls for diligent and speedy use of the best means, seriously to discuss and rightly to understand onr liberty and duty ; thereby to beget unity among ourselves in the dne observance of obedience to the authority of England
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and our own just privileges, for the effecting whereof it is ordered that Simon Bradstreet, &c. be a committee to consider and debate such matter or thing of publie concernment, touching onr patent, laws, privileges, and duty to his Majesty, as they may judge expedient, that so (if the will of God be) we may speak and act the same thing, becoming prudent, honest, conscientions, and faithful men."
Now what their notion of these " just privileges" was, may be gathered from "their refusing to make the oath of allegiance necessary ;" " refusing to cause proceedings at law to be in the name of the King." " Maintaining that liberty of conscience justified their removal to this quarter of the world; that with removal their subjection to England ceased; and that the sovereignty of the soil was in them, because purchased by them of the native princes." 1
That these were doctrines holden and avowed by " persons of influence," among the early emigrants to New England we know from history. Their patent, or old charter itself, was in fact only an incorporation for trade, turned by the dexterity of the first settlers into a civil sovereignty. 'And the real cause of their extreme attachment to it was, that, under color of that instrument, they chose their own rulers and judges, made laws, and in effect were an independ- ent state.
How this theory of the ancient leaders of Massachusetts was seconded by the spirit of the people, will be apparent from a single transaction of a somewhat later period. During the reign of King James H., our fathers had been insulted by the dissolution of their charter, and oppressed by the proceedings of the King's Commissioners. The leaders of the Colony were indignant. The people were stung to madness.
On the eighteenth of April, 1689, - the eighteenth and nineteenth of April are red-letter days in the calendar of American liberty, - on the eighteenth of April, 1689, say our historians, there came up from North Boston, - that north- ern hive has been famous in all times for a hardy, industrious, and intrepid race of men, - there came up from North Boston a multitude of men and boys run- ning. The drums beat. The people ran to their arms. They rushed to Fort Hill, where was then a formidable fortification, " standing so thick that one gun from the fort would have killed a hundred of them; but God prevented!"> They scaled the sconce, and, seizing the lower battery, they turned the guns "on the red coats in the fort," who surrendering at discretion, they took the King's Council prisoners, and put the King's Governor under guard ; they sent the captain of the King's frigate to jail ; and turned the batteries on the King's frigate herself'; and the country people coming in, the elders and fathers took possession of the King's government; and thus was effected a glorious revolution here in Massachusetts thirty days before it was known that King William of glorious memory had just effected a similar glorious revolution on the other side of the Atlantic.
It is very obvious that the fate of New England was suspended on the fate of the Prince of Orange. Had he failed, our ancestors of that day would have had to expiate the guilt of treason in exile, or confiscation, or on the scaffold. How
1 Hutchinson's Hist. of Mass. vol. i. ch. 2. 2 Hutchinson's Hist. v. i. ch. 3.
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truly then may it be said that the spirit of our ancestors of the first age was em- lated by the immediate anthors of our independence, and that these descendants were true to the example and glory of their predecessors !
If we descend from the era of the English Revolution to the middle of the last century, we find the same daring spirit of liberty promulgated, not by irresponsi- ble seribblers, in anonymous pamphlets, but by the highest colonial lawyers on the floor of state, and by the most learned colonial clergy from their pulpits. Take, for example, an extract from a sermon, entitled " A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission to the Higher Powers, with some Reflections on the Resist- ance to King Charles I., and on the Anniversary of his Death, in which the Myste- rious Doctrine of that Prince's Saintship and Martyrdom is unriddled. Preached by Jonathan Mayhew, Pastor of the West Church in Boston. Among other doctrines, not less bold and decisive, he lays down the following : --
" A people really oppressed to a great degree by their sovereign, cannot well be insensible when they are so oppressed. And such a people, if I may allude to an ancient fable, have, like the Hesperian fruit, a dragon for their protector and guardian. Nor would they have any reason to mourn, if some Hercules should appear to despatch him. For a nation thus abused, to arise unanimously and to resist their prince, even to the dethroning him, is not criminal; but a rea- sonable way of vindicating their liberties and just rights."
Now it must be remembered that this discourse was preached six-and-twenty years before the era of our Revolution, by the most learned and popular preacher of his day ; that it was published " at the request of his hearers;" that the thing was not done in a corner, nor circulated in a whisper, but as the title-page has it, Anno, 1750. Boston : New England. "Printed and sold by D. Fowle, in Queen Street, and by D. Gookin, over against the Old South Meeting House."
There is no need of further proof that the fathers of our Revolution were true to their ancestors, both distant and innediate ; obeying their precepts, copying their examples, and acting up to their characters.
It remains for us to observe, that the fathers of our Revolution were also true to themselves and true to posterity ; and in this, above all, that they were true to virtue and liberty.
There were three great principles, which, in the opinion of our ancestors, in every age, constituted the essence of colonial liberty; and with which, in their minds, it was identified.
1. That their rulers and judges should be chosen by, and responsible to them- selves.
2. That the right of laying taxes on the inhabitants of the Colonies should belong exclusively to their own representatives.
3. That their religious rights should depend wholly on their colonial laws and constitutions.
The first of these principles was the object of the struggles of the first settlers of New England and their immediate descendants. They exercised this liberty between fifty and sixty years. They lost it by the dissolution of their old char- ter. That of William and Mary did not restore it. Among other obnoxious provisions in this last charter, the appointment of the Governor, Lieutenant- Governor, and Secretary, with a qualified, appellate, judicial jurisdiction, was reserved to the Crown.
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