king. The American Tories exulted in the destruction of the Gaspee. If this does not wake the British lion, wrote Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, no one will ever tremble at his roar again! "So daring an insult!" By men, too, who are perfectly well known, and yet not one arrested! The royal animal has been asleep these four or five years past; as if these turbulent colonists could be ruled by soft words, and milk-white steeds drawing great lords in gorgeous coaches! A gracious king sees with what result. A king's lieutenant wounded, and turned out of his vessel! Governor Hutchinson had the honor of conversing with Admiral Montagu on the subject; and he rejoiced to hear the admiral state, that, in his opinion, Lord Sandwich would "never leave pursuing the colony until it was disfranchised." Governor Hutchinson's own opinion, as recorded for the perusal of the home government, was this: "If the late affair at Rhode Island is passed over without a full inquiry and due resentment, our liberty people will think they may with impunity commit any acts of violence, be they ever so atrocious; and the friends to government will despond, and give up all hopes of being able to withstand the faction."

The home government needed no prompting. The lion was awake. The "law-servants of the crown" pronounced the act of the Rhode Islanders high treason, levying war against the king. Five royal commissioners- the governor of Rhode Island, the chief justices of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, and a judge of the Boston Vice-admiralty Court-were appointed to go to Rhode Island, and investigate the fell business. General Gage, commanding the troops at Boston, was ordered to hold himself in readiness to assist the commissioners, if they should need assistance. Governor Wanton received this information from England about the 1st of October in a long despatch from Lord Dartmouth; and the material parts of this document found their way into the newspapers. Secrecy would have been desirable, if the governor had meant to execute the king's commands; but important matters will get into the papers in times of public commotion, if the pigeon-hole is not well looked to. There was one paragraph in Lord Dartmouth's despatch which arrested every intelligent mind in the colonies, and kindled every patriotic heart. Jefferson read it at Monticello with feelings inexpressible. Dabney Carr read it in his cabin full of children, and, I doubt not, rode swiftly to his brother-in-law, Jefferson, to talk it

over :

"It is his majesty's intention, in consequence of the advice of his Privy Council, that the persons concerned in the burning of the Gaspee schooner, and in the other violences which attended that daring insult, SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO ENGLAND TO BE TRIED; and I am therefore to signify to you his majesty's pleasure," that the prisoners, together with the witnesses on both sides, shall be delivered to the custody of Admiral Montagu, and sent in a king's ship to England!

The commissioners arrived at Newport. They offered a reward of a thousand pounds sterling to any one who would reveal or betray the ringleaders, and five hundred pounds for the detection of any other person concerned. Before entering upon their duties they all swore and subscribed the three great oaths, so pertinent to the occasion. First, they swore they did not believe the doctrine of transubstantiation, and that they regarded the invocation of the Virgin Mary and the sacrifice of the mass as superstitious and idolatrous. Secondly, they swore that they considered George III. the true king of Great Britain, and rejected the Pretender, who called himself James III. Thirdly, they swore, that, from their hearts, they abhorred, detested, and abjured, as impious and heretical, the damnable doctrine and position, that the Pope could depose a king by pronouncing him excommunicate. These three tremendous oaths, drawn out to great length, having been duly sworn, recorded, and signed, the commissioners proceeded to business. It was in the Newport State House, in that large room into which summer visitors peep, and admire the quaint carpentry of other days, that these solemn things were done.

The commissioners summoned witnesses, took depositions, adjourned, met again, sat long and often, made up a voluminous report, and discovered nothing! Not one man was so much as arrested! Every witness that knew any thing about the matter staid at home, and sent an excuse. Some had causes coming on at One had "a swelling in the hand." Another was seventyfour years of age. Sabin, at whose house the assailants had met, and where they had spent an hour and a half in casting bullets and sharpening cutlasses, sent the following, which may serve as a sample:

court.

"Gentlemen, I now address you on account of a summons I received from you, requiring my attendance at the Council Chamber in Newport on Wednesday, 20th instant.

"Now, gentlemen, I beg to acquaint you what renders me incapable of attending. I am an insolvent debtor; and, therefore, my person would be subject to an arrest by some one or other of my creditors; and my health has been on a decline for these two mouths past, and it would be dangerous should I leave my house.

"And, further, were I to attend, I could give no information relative to the assembling, arming, training, and leading on the people concerned in the destroying the schooner Gaspee.

"On the 9th day of June last, at night, I was employed at my house, attending company; who were John Andrew, Esq., Judge of the Court of Vice-admiralty, John Cole, Esq., Mr. Hitchcock, and George Brown, who supped at my house, and staid there until two of the clock in the morning following; and I have not any knowledge relative to the matter on which I am summoned."*

And so said they all, namely, George Brown, Mr. Hitchcock, Judge Andrews, and John Cole, Esq., none of whom could attend the honorable commissioners, though they found time to write excuses protesting the densest ignorance of the whole affair. In a word, the investigation was an absolute nullity and farce. Those five commissioners, with all the aid the king could give them, with his fleet, his army, and his thousand pounds, could not, after five months' trying, discover what every boy in the streets knew, and what they themselves knew, as mere men. The publicity given to Lord Dartmouth's despatch would alone have defeated its object, even if the commissioners had been in earnest.

The affair might have ended here; but the king's friends were now in the ascendency in Parliament, and they must needs invest this folly with the importance and permanence of law. An act was passed for the better protection of the navy and its appurtenances, which made it a capital offence to destroy any object belonging to a king's vessel. The act was so worded, that a man who should cut a button from a drunken marine's coat, or knock in the head of a royal beef-barrel, was to be presumed a traitor to the king, and could be sent for trial to any county in England.

* A History of the Destruction of his Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee in Narragan sett Bay. By John Russell Bartlett, Secretary of State of Rhode Island. P. 102. Providence. 1871.

CHAPTER XV.

THE EFFECT IN VIRGINIA AND ELSEWHERE.

Ir were difficult to exaggerate the interest which this affair excited throughout the colonies. The audacious gallantry of the Providence men was the first theme of admiration; and, before that had become an exhausted topic, rumors of coming vengeance from England renewed the public interest in it. Lord Dartmouth's despatch, the arrival of the commissioners, and their solemn sessions at Newport, still kept all minds attentive. The absurd failure of the royal commission does not seem to have allayed the popular resentment. Finally, the act of Parliament fixing the Rhode Island precedent into imperial law convinced all but the most reluctant that the king was resolved upon forcing the controversy to an armed issue. Students familiar with the period receive the impression that it was the burning of the Gaspee, more than the throwing overboard of the tea, that led to the Boston Port Bill, and so precipitated the Revolution.

One evening in the early part of March, 1772, six or seven gentlemen sat about a table in a private room of the Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg, Va. They were all members of the House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thomas Jefferson, his brother-in-law Dabney Carr, and one or two others. Rhode Island had been for weeks upon every tongue. It was not yet known that the scenes enacting in the Newport State House were comedy instead of tragedy. Paragraphs of fearful import circulated in the newspapers from colony to colony. It looked, for a time, as though poor little Rhode Island was about to be extirpated; for Admiral Montagu was going there with a fleet, General Gage with an army; the inquisition had already been set up; and every man whom it chose to arrest was to

be sent three thousand miles away for trial. Rhode Island was the least of the colonies; and it seemed as if, for that reason, she had been first marked for vengeance. But the lawless court then sitting at Newport an infuriate ministry could transfer to Williamsburg, and order fleets and armies to Virginia to execute its decrees! At such a crisis, what does it become the most powerful of the colonies to do on behalf of the weakest?

This was the question which those gentlemen were discussing at the Raleigh Tavern that night. They were of the younger members of the House; and they had met by themselves, because they feared their elders would hesitate to act with the requisite promptness and spirit. Their object was to hit upon a course which should be moderate enough for the Tories, while being decided enough for the Whigs. Virginia, they all felt, must stand by Rhode Island. The colonies must make common cause. But it was requisite to proceed with moderation.

We shall never appreciate what it cost some of the Virginians to fall into line with the Northern colonies on these occasions. The ideal of New England, as we plainly see in all the memorials of the first century, was Israel; but Virginia's beloved and honored model was England: and both were equally cramped by the inadequacy of their pattern. When the coast of British North America was divided, it was the northern half that should have been called Virginia, and the southern half New England; for it was in the southern half that another England was to be attempted. There the Church of England was to be established; there primogeniture and entail were to perpetuate county families; there the laborer was to be ignorant, poor, and hopeless; there the government was to be an imitation of king, lords, and commons; there the king was to be the source of honor; there that inexplicable, complex, omnipotent influence, the social tone, was to be English, only English, and that exceedingly. For a century or more it was Virginia's favorite vanity to differ from New England in just that very particular which the present crisis called upon her to disregard.

In 1674, when the agents of Virginia were in London trying to get their rights secured by a charter, they were opposed on the ground of New England's recent adherence to Cromwell. The agents replied, No disobedience of New England ought to cause apprehension of the same on the part of Virginia; for the people of