USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 17
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Reference has been frequently made in previous pages of this sketch to ac- credited Agents of Massachusetts, paid and employed in her service near the British Court. There is something very significant and suggestive in this ar- rangement when it is traced to its purpose and followed out in its workings. The arrangement may be regarded as a curious and ingenious offset, in a spirit of complacency and self-assertion on the part of the Province, to what it viewed as a sort of supererogatory officiousness on the part of the Crown. The king sent over here a governor to represent himself. The Province reciprocated by stationing its agent near him. The agents had ambassa- dorial, though not plenipotentiary, powers. So far as either of those terms was in any degree applicable in the case, it would require that its use should be based upon some assumed or supposed view of a sort of independence in the colony or province. That was in fact the underlying ground and reason of this remarkable employment and accrediting of representative
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
agents by Massachusetts. In fact the only key by which we can interpret and consistently explain the course of the popular administration of Massa- chusetts in this matter, in their nominal subjection to the English dictation, is the frank avowal that that subjection was never regarded as thoroughly real. At the bottom of their hearts the men of Massachusetts felt that there was no foundation in the nature, in the right, or in the reason of things for that constructive relation which the English monarchs and council assumed Mas- sachusetts to hold to them. The relation was artificial, forced, and undefin- able. What looks like wilfulness, or obstinacy, or perversity, or arrogance in her attitude toward England was simply the disguise or the form in which was manifested the unrepressed feeling that still could not frankly assert itself for what it really was. No other explanation makes intelligible the facts which run through our whole history, -which make our history. This underlying feeling was that the passage of the ocean, the reclaiming of a wilderness at their own charges, and the organization of a secure and pros- perous Commonwealth, which was gradually adapting itself to a new nation- ality, had secured for the colonists the absolute right to manage their own affairs. This makes our history lucid. Ignorance, or a non-recognition of this fact on the part of England, may redeem her course toward Massachusetts from the charge of oppression and tyranny, at the same time that it accounts for her failure. In no later colony of Great Britain, in the East or the West, has there ever been any parallelism of her relations to Massachusetts.
Through a large portion alike of the Colonial and the Provincial epoch of our State the authorities here, so far as they represented the feelings of our own people, might rely on having friends and sympathizers at the British Court without the expense, always burdensome, of sending and supporting agents there. Cromwell's government would never have harmed the people of this colony. While contending with commissioners, lords of trade, and governors, Massachusetts might often rely also on the party in opposition to the Ministry for the time being, and likewise on a strong sympathy from a party of the liberty-loving English people as voluntary, spontaneous, and unpaid advocates and defenders. But our authorities, from first to last, always acted on the conviction - which proved to be substantially correct - that the English monarch and his advisers were necessarily ignorant of the true interests of this country, which were, of course, better understood here than there. So it was the policy and wisdom of Massachusetts to en- lighten that ignorance, and from her own point of view to represent her own cause, and habitually to keep a friend at court, and on special emergencies a carefully drilled and instructed agent of her own training. To this day no ambassador goes from Washington to represent our nation abroad with more carefully prepared instructions, limitations, and conditions of terms, and with a more direct accountability to the appointing power than did the men whom Massachusetts continuously sent as her agents to England. And Massachusetts stood peculiarly in this respect among the colonies. No other of them, except in a limited way, did like her; and so far as
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
other colonies on occasions sent their agents to England, or employed special representatives there, it was done in imitation of Massachusetts, - sometimes even to thwart the agents of Massachusetts.
These diplomatic agencies signify a latent sense of rightful indepen- dency. For the relations into which Massachusetts put herself with Eng- land were truly diplomatic. How accurately, indeed, some of the officials in England who had to deal with the Massachusetts agents divined this pretentious character in which they presented themselves, is well signified in the following incident: When a second draft of the Province Charter had been prepared, the Lords of the Council presented a copy of it to Agent Mather, with the request that any objections might be made known to the Attorney-General. Mather was so dissatisfied that he declared he would rather part with his life than submit to some of its provisions. He was told that the consent of the agents was not essential, and "that they were not plenipotentiaries, as for a sovereign State." 1
These agents of Massachusetts were sent on special errands from Massa- chusetts from the earliest years of her history. With the exception of an interval previous to the final vacating of the Colony Charter, during which she did not think it wise or safe to risk any of her leading men in that peril- ous office,- and in fact could not find any such willing to assume it, - agents, either transient or resident, sent or chosen in England, were con- tinued in an unbroken series down to the Revolution. At that last crisis these agents were not formally recognized as such, nor were their names registered at the public offices ; but still they were heard in that capacity.
We shall best understand the office and functions of these agents as simulated diplomatic officials in our Provincial epoch, by tracing them as meeting emergencies in the earlier Colonial period. When the first govern- ment established here began, with a high hand, to exercise its authority by clearing its jurisdiction of all unwelcome and offending persons, it was, of course, well understood that such victims would at once spread their griev- ances with bitter complaining before the authorities at home. Our Court felt it essential to withstand their influence by presenting its own side of the story. So we find on the records that in 1641 Salem and Roxbury churches were to be asked to allow their ministers, Peter and Weld, and the Boston church to allow its member, Mr. Hibbins, a merchant, "to go for England upon some weighty occasions for the good of the country, as is conceived." These first agents well understood their errand. If they had any other than verbal instructions, such did not transpire or get into print or on record in England. Chalmers says2 that it was considered as proved on the trial of Peter, twenty years afterward, that the mission of these three colleagues was "to promote the interest of reformation by stirring up the war and driving it on." And he insinuates that the intrigues, " perhaps the money," of these agents procured the passage by the Commons of an ordinance, in March, 1643, " for the encouragement of New England," by
1 [See chap. i. of this volume. - ED.] 2 Revolt, etc.
-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
freeing " that colony from taxation, either inward or outward, or in this kingdom or in America, till the House take further order to the contrary." Here certainly was a good beginning in an arrangement which involves some of the important ends of diplomacy. It would have been well for Peter had he found his way back here to safe protection in the wilderness, and so have escaped hanging and quartering.
Again, in 1646, Edward Winslow was commissioned as agent " to nego- tiate for this Colony with the Parliament from which we have lately suffered, for that there was none to inform the same in our behalf." He was especially to defend the colony from the complaints of those to whom it had denied a right of appeal from our Court to England. He was furnished with most careful, explicit, and well-guarded instructions, " fairly and orderly written." He was to make as many friends as possible, while the magistrates separately were to aid him by writing to their friends. Massachusetts thought herself warranted in asking the commissioners of the United Colonies to share the expenses of Winslow's mission. He had been accredited in due form to the Committee on Plantations, and he was plied with new instructions up to 1649.
In December, 1660, very particular instructions were sent to Captain (afterward Governor) Leverett, Richard Saltonstall, and Henry Ashurst, as Commissioners for Massachusetts, to meet all charges against her, to plead her interests, and to keep a general watch over all public affairs at the critical epoch of the restoration of Charles II .; and funds were deposited for expenses. Henry Ashurst, Esq., and his two sons, Sir Henry and Wil- liam, - alderman and member of Parliament, - were long and faithfully in the employ of the Colony and Province. Sir Henry afterward complained on being superseded by Phips, and on account of inadequate remuneration. In the long and weary period from this date to the fall of the Colony Charter the need of agents well-skilled in diplomacy was emergent, and the service was unwelcome, arduous, and hazardous. In December, 1661, a committee was chosen to prepare very careful instructions, to be signed by the Gover- nor, for the Agents Bradstreet and Norton, and to provide for their pay.1
1 The reader is at liberty to select any epi- thet he may think appropriate to characterize the following communication addressed by our General Court, in August, 1661, to Charles II., bearing in mind, however, the fact that the address had to serve in the place of any deference paid, or intended to be paid, to the King's orders : -
" ILLUSTRIOUS SIR, -That majesty and be- nignity both sat upon the throne whereunto your outcasts made their former address, witness this second eucharistical approach unto the best of kings, who, to other titles of royalty common to him with other gods amongst men, delighted therein more peculiarly to conform himself to the God of gods, in that he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he cried he heard. Our petition was the
representation of an exile's necessities. This script, gratulatory and lowly, is the reflection of the gracious rays of Christian majesty. There we besought your favor by presenting to a com- passionate eye that bottle full of tears shed by us in this Jeshimon .* Here we also acknowl- edge the efficacy of regal influence to qualify these salt waters. The mission of ours was ac- companied with these churches sitting in sack- cloth ; the reception of yours was the holding forth the sceptre of life."
They express the hope that Charles will prove a greater and a better king than David. His Majesty came grievously short of this, having only the faults of David, - worse ones, too, - and none of his virtues. [It is doubtful if this address was ever sent. See Vol. I. p. 353 .- ED.]
· Feshimon, - a desert (1 Sam. xxiii. 24).
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
The king was irritated by the limitation of the powers of these agents for agreements and concessions, as they were restricted in their authority as carefully as are modern ambassadors between nations. Charles de- manded that agents should be sent well accredited and charged with full powers. The reluctant emissaries took care to stipulate for " public assur- ance that if their persons were detained in England, their damages should be made good." In 1664 the king had ordered that Governor Bellingham and Magistrate Hathorne be sent over to him as agents, with full powers to bind the Colony to his terms. But it was not prudent at that time for such men to go on such an errand; and this was the safer side of the water.1 During the presidency of Dudley and the "usurpation" of Andros, on to the reconstruction of the government, it was beyond measure important that Massachusetts should have able, discreet, strong, and true-hearted men close to King and Council, and skilful in winning friends either in the Gov- ernment, in the Opposition, or in both. All the arts of diplomacy were needed. Enemies, watchful, shrewd, and unscrupulous abounded. Money had supreme power, and poverty was exposure to many risks. The councils of Massachusetts were divided. A prerogative and a popular party were manifesting themselves in well-pronounced elements. The business of an agent was perilous and exacting; not even colleagues, still less a single one, could be entrusted with full or even more than a trifle of discretionary power. When the king, urged on by our enemies or by his Council, after writing many letters, had come to understand the temper of the stoutly recusant and intractable people called his " subjects," he was positive and persistent that any one whom he would consent to accept as a qualified agent should prove that he was such, by being authorized and empowered to make full concession to his demands without any by-play, temporizing, or pleading off. It must be owned that he had had enough of that. The policy of his aforesaid "subjects " was delay, or, to use a more trivial term for a sly artifice, " dilly-dallying," - temporizing, evading, parrying threat- ened blows by a change of posture, and pleading all sorts of ingenious excuses, even to the extent of excusing excuses. The strong hope com- mitted to this policy then, as afterward through the Provincial agencies, and confirmed by long and hitherto successful trial, was that plots and counter-plots, and riots and revolution in England might distract the atten- tion of authorities and give us time to toughen our sinews. The state papers of Massachusetts, while it was a colony and a province of Britain, have been generally pronounced to be unmatched for acuteness, ingenuity, and plausibility ; and candor must add, for cunning evasiveness and roguish subtlety. But as the demands of Charles II. and James II. grew in absolute imperiousness for agents with full powers of concession, Massachusetts became all the more stringent in limiting those powers. At one interval it was thought wiser not to send an agent; at another, no competent person
1 [For the work of the Massachusetts agents in the endeavor to save the Colonial Charter, see Mr. Deane's chapter in Vol. I. - ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
would venture himself on the errand. When it came to be understood that the required concessions were not to be made to the royal demands, nor yet to orders in Council, nor to the requisitions of the Lords of Trade, but that, instead of conceding, agents must trust to their wits for a fast-and-loose skill in evading and apologizing, the service was indeed a hard one; and fitness and willingness for it could hardly go together. Then, too, those who had done their best in that service, and had stood the badgering and cornering of the contestants at Court as keen-witted as themselves, finding the task futile, had, in their discomfiture, written to our authorities of the hopelessness of opposition and the wisdom of yielding much or little. And then the authorities and the people here, who could but ill appreciate the straits of their agents, would feel aggrieved or angry at the thwarting of their schemes, and would visit their disappointment upon their baffled emissaries in the shape of coldness, neglect, 'or censure. Nearly every agent on reaching home-the wisest and the best of them in their fidel- ity -met with an unrewarding and ungracious reception. Some of them were even said to have died of hearts broken by the loss of the esteem and confidence of the people. In 1676, to thwart the machinations of Ran- dolph, the strong-hearted and sagacious William Stoughton - Puritan to the core, though with a prudential willingness to bend to necessity - was sent with a clerical colleague, Peter Bulkeley, and with rigidly guarded in- structions. Bulkeley did waver, and fell under the ban; and even the stiff Stoughton came under distrust. He was chosen with Dudley for another mission in 1681, but he had had enough of coldness and reproach, and refused to go. So John Richards was substituted for him, and fared no better. These last appointments were the result of a sort of compromise between the two parties in the House and in the Magistracy, as to whether some concessions should be made to the authorities in England, or whether a stand should be made for all the old Charter privileges. So it was thought advisable to send two men who, to a certain extent, should be a check on each other, as differing in shades of opinion and feeling about critical matters at issue. Dudley was much mistrusted, and received fewer ballots than his colleague. The Court was warily on its guard about these emis- saries, Dudley and Richards. They were hampered by most elaborate and cautious instructions ; and even the stingy powers left to them were to be "jointly, and not severally, exercised." By the vessel in which these agents sailed, Randolph wrote to the Bishop of London: "Necessity, and not duty, hath obliged this Government to send over two Agents to Eng- land. They are like the two Consuls of Rome, Cæsar and Bibulus. Major Dudley is a great opposer of the faction here. If he finds things resolutely managed, he will cringe and bow to anything. He hath his fortune to make in the world, etc."
The special and difficult agency of Increase Mather and his colleagues in connection with the Charter, and his grievances over the ill-requital of his services find due treatment in the first chapter of this volume.
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
This backward reference to the Colonial Agencies prepares us to recog- nize the habit and experience of the popular magistracy of Massachusetts, in maintaining what were substantially diplomatic relations with the Eng- lish Court and Council. Under the Provincial Charter the need of these agencies was even more stringently felt, while the embarrassments and difficulties attending them were increased. The king had his ambassador here in the shape of a governor, a sort of chargé d'affaires, with a secre-
Tho; well svilliam Hillings
John Lauray
Richard Saltonstatt
S. Bradythat
John Norton
william Stoughton.
John Richards:1
Jneraf rather
Elisha forde
Frawicks
THE COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL AGENTS.
tary of legation, - only he wished the Province to pay these officials. Mas- sachusetts, in reciprocating the compliment, undertook to pay her own emissaries. But as to this pay there arose on occasions a troublesome per- plexity. If it was to be drawn from the Province treasury, not only the representatives of the people but the Council and Governor must choose, commission, and draw the warrant for the salary of the agent. We find, VOL. II. - II.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
therefore, that in the continuous and embittered strifes which arose between the intractable " subjects " here and their royal Governors, when Massachu- setts wished to be represented by agents, after her old Colonial pattern, the House had often to make shift to send them by its separate commission, and to provide for their remuneration by some indirect method other than the public treasury. Sometimes the Council concurred in such agencies with- out the furtherance of the Governor, and there were occasions which induced the Council to empower an agent of its own. Sewall, in his Diary, gives details of the lively controversy, in 1709, between Governor Dudley and the House, on the appointment by the latter of William Ashurst as agent, while his brother Henry was agent for Connecticut, at a time when there was pending a contest about disputed territory between the two colonies.
Jur: Dummer Belchen Chriskilly
WBollar Dennys De Bent Afranklin Arthur Lee .
THE COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL AGENTS.
Considerable charges were also incurred by Massachusetts in paying for legal counsel employed by her agents. These Provincial agencies were trusts of heavy responsibility and required very able men. Benjamin Franklin in his turn did good service for Massachusetts and other prov- inces, as did Edmund Burke for New York.
Massachusetts was excellently and faithfully served by members of the Ashurst family, who were in full sympathy with the religious and political principles which had sway here. Still, one of the brothers was censured for weakness in our cause, nor did either of them nor the father receive due compensation. Associated with them for a time, and our agent from 1710 to 1721, was the able, accomplished, and courtly Jeremy Dummer, grandson of our former immigrant at Newbury. A graduate of Harvard, he had lived abroad several years as a cultivated scholar; and on revisiting his native land was sent back as agent. He was an associate of Boling-
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
broke, and of other men in power. He parted with all Puritan strictness. adopting somewhat free principles, and had so addicted himself to pleasure that he was exercised by a peculiar depth of penitence as he approached his end. But he was constant and discreet in serving Massachusetts, as well as Connecticut, and did many acts of friendliness, besides efficiently employing his pen in defence of the charters. Yet as an exhibition of the techiness of our popular leaders, he was dropped in 1721, to be re-employed in 1723, because he had advised to certain concessions to the royal Governor.
In 1723 recourse was had by Massachusetts to the services in London of Mr. Anthony Anderson, who had sent hither the heads of the complaints which had been brought against the action of our General Court. The House and Council not being able to agree upon an " Address" in reply, each sent a separate one. Elisha Cooke was commissioned from here to help, and Dummer was again called in to aid. But in 1725 these three agents could not accord. In plain terms, they quarrelled. In 1729, during the contentions with Governor Burnet, Francis Wilkes and Jonathan Belcher, both New England merchants, were intrusted with agencies in behalf of the House. As the Council had not concurred in the appointment, nor in the appropriation of £300 for pay, other Boston merchants became responsible for the funds. Christopher Kilby, of Boston, whose name is perpetuated in a street, was our agent from 1739 to 1749. Jasper Mauduit in 1763, act- ing as agent without much satisfaction to himself or to his constituents, asked to be relieved. Other able men were called to this difficult service, and as the controversy with the mother country approached to the final upturn it became more and more necessary for Massachusetts to be served by men of mark in intellect and spirit, and at the same time more difficult for her to find such men, who would stand for her side with comfort and safety to themselves. Dr. Franklin filled the ideal of such a representative.
A very interesting and delicate matter presents itself for passing notice in connection with the diplomacy of the Agents of Massachusetts.
Corresponding to the shrewdness, acuteness, and subtle policy of what may be called our state papers of the period - already referred to - were certain proceedings on the part of some of our agents which have been made the grounds of an imputation on their honor as gentlemen, bound to respect certain confidential rights of others. Bearing in mind that a large part of the business of these agents was to penetrate and thwart the secret plottings of our enemies at the Court, and to acquaint themselves with the confidential communications which disaffected persons sent from here touching our popular leaders and their measures, we can scarcely be sur- prised that these agents, so restricted in the exercise of their own discre- tion, plied every means of serving their employers in any other way. The agents were well aware that from the earliest days of the colony. the King, the Ministry, and the Committees of the Lords were constantly receiving and being influenced by secret information, often unscrupulous and de- famatory, and always tending to mischief, sent from residents or chance
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
visitors here. It was the aim of the agents, if not their duty, to ferret out these foes and their secrets. They tried to do this. The Tory Chalmers 1 alleges instances of what he regards as dishonorable doings in this direction. He doubtless laid his stress upon the signal case of Dr. Franklin, soon to be again referred to. Going back to the first year of our colony, Chalmers affirms that " the letters written to their friends by the Browns, whom Endi- cott sent home from Salem, were feloniously intercepted and read in our General Court, on the pretence, equally mean and unjust, that they might possibly injure the plantation. Thus early was introduced into the politics of Massachusetts the dishonorable practice of appropriating the communica- tions of private friendship, wrongfully obtained, to the malevolent purposes of party. It then rooted in her system, and in after times produced abund- antly." Again, Chalmers quotes from a letter of Colonel Nichols, one of Charles II.'s Commissioners here, to the Secretary of State, charges of the surreptitious procurement in England of important papers to be sent to Massachusetts, and affirms positively that one such paper was stolen out of Lord Arlington's office. Chalmers adds: "No standing agents were maintained in England during Charles II.'s reign; but the General Court was faithfully served by various emissaries, -by Collins, Thomson, and others, -who intrigued for it and transmitted intelligence. From the clerks of the Privy Council, who were retained in treacherous pay, they pro- cured the fullest information, and even the state papers."
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