LXIV
- To John’s bro, the sheriff, we lay a kind word in passing
- Cromwell was not prudent
- nor honest
- nor laudable.
- Prayer: hands uplifted
- Solitude: a person, a NURSE
- plumes: is she angel or bird, is she a bird or an angel?
- ruffled, rumpled, rugged ... wings
- looks down
- and pities those who wear a crown
- meaning (query) George, Louis or Frederick?
- Beautiful spot, am almost wholly surrounded by water
- wherein Deacon (later General) Palmer
- has surrounded himself with a colony
- of glass-blowers from Germany
- come to undertake that work in America, 1752,
- his lucerne grass
- whereof 4 crops a year, seed he had of Gridley of Abingdon
- pods an odd thing, a sort of ramshorn of straw
- about 70 bushel of 1/4th an acre of land
- his potatoes
- sub conditione fidelitatis
- is it known that Oliver ever advised to lay internal taxes upon us?
- or solicited office of stamps?
- to be dragged through the town only in pageantry
- to be burnt on a hill, and his house broken open ...
- but has not the Lieutenant Governor
- a near relation etc/
- a son etc/
- in one family etc/
- BY 40 towns, verbatim, their instrument
- to their representatives Sam Adams has taken some paragraphs
- Stamp Act spread a spirit from Georgia
- to New Hampshire
- with honour, more inquisitive as to their liberties
- even the lowest
- Your courts are shut down, justice VOID
- I have not drawn a writ since the 1st of November
- if this authority be once recognized
- ruins America
- I must cut down my expenses.
- For my ruin as well as America’s ...
- To renounce under tree, nay under the very branch
- where they hang’d him in effigy ...
- UNANIMOUS for Gridley, Jas Otis, J. Adams
- pray that the Courts may be opened
- (original of this is preserved)
- If what I wrote last night
- recall what Lord Bacon
- wrote about laws ... invisible and correspondences ...
- that parliament
- hath no authority
- to impose internal taxes upon us.
- Common Law. 1st Inst. 142
- Coke, to the 3rd Inst. Law is the subject’s birthright
- Want of right and of remedy are all one.
- CONSTRUED that no innocent
- may by literal construction be
- damaged actus
- legis nulli facit injuriam
- Governor in council as supreme court of probate
- ... by more ravenous sort of ambition
- or avarice ...
- avoid as the plague
- tendency of the act to reduce the body of people
- to ignorance, dependence and poverty
- religious bigots
- the worst of men, colonies
- becomes a fashionable study ... and will probably
- stare more and more for some time. Ipswich Instructions
- right to tax selves,
- rather as allies than as subjects
- FIRST settlement not a national act
- and not at expense of the nation
- nor made on land of the Crown
- waddled through snow driving my cattle to water
- Shutting courts equals abdication of throne
- for entering a vessel at Louisburg
- and taking away
- 10 barrels of
- rum
- Pitt vs/ Grenville, and for the repeal of the act
- Parliament takes as Representative and not Legislative
- authority
- But Thatcher got him indicted for barratry
- And he came near to conviction. Goffe grew warm
- and said Eaton’s character
- was as good as any man’s at the bar
- punch wine bread cheese apples pipes and tobacco
- Thursday oated at Martin’s
- when we saw five boxes of dollars
- going in a horse cart to Salem for Boston
- FOR England, said to contain about $18,000
- lopping and trimming
- walnut trees, and for felling of pines and savins
- An irregular misshapen pine will darken
- the whole scene in some places
- case between negro and owner. At same time a craving man
- (Hutchinson)
- at Dr Tuft’s where I found fine wild goose on the spit
- and cranberries in the skillet
- to the White House in Brattle St.
- office lucrative in itself but new statutes
- had been passed in Parliament
- J. Q. A. born July eleventh
- duty on glass incompatible
- with my ideas on right, justice and policy
- between negro and owner engaged Mr Hawley’s attention
- 100 towns, one week’s notice
- about 10 o’clock troops began landing under cover of the cannon
- of the ships, without molestation
- Oct. 1st.
- Population of Boston retrograde during 25 years
- that preceded this
- was now not above 16,000
- During my absence on circuit
- as Byles said ‘Our grievances red-dressed’
- under my windows in the square
- drum, fife, and in evening violins, songs
- flutes of the serenaders, that is, Sons of Liberty
- as well at the extravagance of the populace,
- deceptions to which they are liable,
- suppression of equity, when thoroughly heated
- my drafts will be found in the Boston Gazette for those years ‘68, ‘69
- a cargo of wines from Madeira
- belonging to Mr Hancock
- without paying customs
- painful drudgery I had in his cause:
- as to this statute my client never consented
- Mr Hancock never consented, never voted for it himself
- nor for any man to make any such law
- whenever
- we leave principles and clear propositions
- and wander into construction we wander into a wilderness
- a darkness wherein arbitrary power
- set on throne of brass with a sceptre of iron ...
- Suspended, in fact, only after Battle of Lexington
- which ended all such prosecutions
- Mt Wollanston, seat of our ancestors
- from
- East chamber every ship sloop schooner and brigantine
- Three hundred and fifty were under the Liberty Tree,
- a young buttonwood,
- and preparing the next day’s paper, cooking up paragraphs,
- articles, working the political engine
- MORNING at Brackett’s upon case of a whale ...
- that I had imported from London the
- only complete set of British Statutes
- then in Boston or, I think, in the whole
- of the Colonies, and in that work a statute
- whose publication they feared, an
- express prohibition of empressment
- expressly IN America which statute they intended to
- get repealed
- and did succeed 1769 toward the end of December so doing.
- About 9 o’clock in evening, supposed to be signal of fire
- men in front of the barracks and baker’s boy afore mentioned
- Mr Forest known then as the ‘Irish infant’
- tears streaming over his face
- ‘for that very unfortunate man, Captain Preston
- in prison
- wants council and can get none, Mr Quincy
- will serve if you will
- Mr Auchmuty declines unless you will engage’
- ‘But he must be sensible that this wd/ be as important a case
- as was ever tried here or in any country....
- not expect me to use art, sophistry, prevarication’
- Upon which he offered me a retaining fee of one guinea
- which I accepted
- (Re which things was Hutchinson undoubtedly scro-
- fulous ego scriptor cantilenae
- Ez. P)
- Bringing it in all to 10 guineas
- for Preston and 8 for the sojers
- (But where the devil this brace of Adamses sprung from!
- (Oxenbridge Thatcher ... dangers from intemperate heats
- BUT in Connecticut every family has a little manufactury house
- and make for themselves things for which they were used
- to run into debt to the merchants.)
- Cited Beccaria
- He went out and saddled my horse and bridled him
- ‘as a man of liberty, I respect you
- ‘and from here to Cape Cod you won’t find ten men amiss’
- nihil humanum alienum
- This landlord, a high son
- and has on his sign:
- Sons of Liberty served here ...
- When he came away he took view of the comet
- ... to roll and cool themselves and feed on white honeysuckle
- our horses had got out of compound.
- SUBILLAM
- Cumis ego occulis meis
- sleeping under a window: pray for me,
- withered to skin and nerves tu theleis respondebat illa
- apothanein; pray for me gentlemen
- my prayers used to be answered, She prayed for deliverance
- 110 years of age, and some say she is over that
- Anemonie, at Nantasket; non vi sed saepe legendo
- Severn Ayres of Virginia, Mr Bull, Mr Trapier of S. Carolina
- Chas Second’s time was tax voted in Carolina
- Hemp seed cd/ be brought here, mulberry does well in our climate
- When people of Europe have been insidiously deprived
- of their liberties
- which wd/ render jurors mere ostentation and pageantry
- green tea, from Holland I hope, but dont know,
- ... recovered at Braintree, pruned by me, grown remarkably
- pines better for lopping
- STOOD by the people much longer than they wd/ stand
- by themselves.
- 1771 make potash and raise a great number of colts
- which they send to the West Indies for rum
- Splendours of Hartford and Middletown
- just as we got there
- Indian pudding pork greens on the table
- One party for wealth and power
- at expense
- of the liberty of their country
- wars, carnage, confusion
- not interested in their servitude
- I am, for all I can see, left quite alone
- 13th, Thursday
- landlady great grand daughter of Governor Endicott
- new light, continually canting ...
- said Indian preacher: Adam! Adam when you knew
- it wd/ make good cider!
- Mrs Rops, fine woman
- very pretty and very genteel
- Tells old stories of witchcraft, paper money and
- Governor Belcher’s administration
- Always convinced that the liberties of the country
- had more to fear from one man (Hutchinson)
- than from all other men whatsoever
- which have always freely and decently uttered
- Rich seldom remarkable for modesty, ingenuity or humanity
- ‘Is mere impertinence a contempt?” asked Mr Otis
- I said there was no more justice left in Britain than hell
- Hutchinson is etc.
- Moore’s Reports, for the book was borrowed; its owner
- a buyer, not a reader of books
- for it had been Mr Gridley’s
- N/Y/ state has done partially
- 22; Monday (this was 1773)
- Hutchinson’s letters received
- Oliver, Moffat, Paxton and Rome
- for 1767, ‘8, ‘9
- avaricious, ambitious, vindictive
- these were the letters that Franklin got hold of
- Bone of our bone, educated among us,
- serpent and deputy serpent
- that Sir John Temple procured them
- God knows how or from whom
- Gentle rain last night and this morning
- Hutchinson sucking up to George IIIrd.
- falsehood in Rome’s letters quite flagrant
- Col. Haworth
- attracted no attention until
- he discovered his antipathy to a cat
- Three cargoes Bohea
- were emptied, this is but an attack upon property
- I apprehend it was necessary, absolute, indispensable
- irregular recourse to original power
- IMpeachment by House before Council
- said shd/ be glad if constitution cd/ carry on
- without recourse to higher powers unwritten ...
- Says Gridley: You keep very late hours!
- End of this Canto.