in this, the master of the vessel was governed by his
obstinacy, or his instructions, let those who know,
say. There are extraordinary situations which
require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated
people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily
restrained within limits strictly regular. A
number of them assembled in the town of Boston, threw
the tea into the ocean, and dispersed without doing
any other act of violence. If in this they did
wrong, they were known, and were amenable to the laws
of the land; against which, it could not be objected
that they had ever, in any instance, been obstructed
or diverted from their regular course, in favor of
popular offenders. They should, therefore, not
have been distrusted on this occasion. But that
ill-fated colony had formerly been bold in their enmities
against the House of Stuart, and were now devoted
to ruin, by that unseen hand which governs the momentous
affairs of this great empire. On the partial
representations of a few worthless ministerial dependants,
whose constant office it has been to keep that government
embroiled, and who, by their treacheries, hope to
obtain the dignity of British knighthood, without
calling for a party accused, without asking a proof,
without attempting a distinction between the guilty
and the innocent, the whole of that ancient and wealthy
town, is in a moment reduced from opulence to beggary.
Men who had spent their lives in extending the British
commerce, who had invested in that place, the wealth
their honest endeavors had merited, found themselves
and their families, thrown at once on the world, for
subsistence by its charities. Not the hundredth
part of the inhabitants of that town had been concerned
in the act complained of; many of them were in Great
Britain, and in other parts beyond sea; yet all were
involved in one indiscriminate ruin, by a new executive
power, unheard of till then, that of a British Parliament.
A property of the value of many millions of money was
sacrificed to revenge, not to repay, the loss of a
few thousands. This is administering justice
with a heavy hand indeed! And when is this tempest
to be arrested in its course? Two wharves are
to be opened again when his Majesty shall think proper:
the residue which lined the extensive shores of the
bay of Boston, are for ever interdicted the exercise
of commerce. This little exception seems to have
been thrown in for no other purpose, than that of
setting a precedent for investing his Majesty with
legislative powers. If the pulse of his people
shall beat calmly under this experiment, another and
another will be tried, till the measure of despotism
be filled up. It would be an insult on common
sense, to pretend that this exception was made in order
to restore its commerce to that great town. The
trade which cannot be received at two wharves alone,
must of necessity be transferred to some other place;
to which it will soon be followed by that of the two
wharves. Considered in this light, it would be