Hutchinson

sessions (see inventory of losses, Hosmer, p.
351) nothing could ever make good so senseless
an act of vandalism. The experience left him
embittered, accentuated his inborn, traditional
distrust of the "common sort," and convinced
him that a more strenuous rather than a more
lenient policy was necessary. Hitherto he had
taken the position that whereas Parliament had
the right to govern the colonies as it pleased it
would be wise not to insist on it (Hutchinson
Correspondence, II, 89-91). Henceforth he was
convinced that the colonies must be forced to
recognize their subjection; and as early as 1766
he suggested that "to familiarize us" with the
principle, no session should pass without "one
or more acts of Parliament" intended to estab-
lish its supremacy (Ibid., II, 228).

In 1766 Hutchinson was dropped from the
Council. Opposed to the Townshend duties
(1767), he felt that, once passed, they should
be strictly enforced. In the absence of Bernard
(1769-71) he acted as governor, received his
commission (made out in 1770) as governor in
1771, and served in that office until 1774. He
did his duty scrupulously by following his in-
structions without question. As his responsibili-
ties increased and he became more unpopular, he
became less the statesman and more the person-
ally injured bureaucrat: colonial opposition he
attributed largely to the disturbed state of Bos-
ton, and the recalcitrance of Boston largely to
the personal enmity of a few men, especially Otis
and Samuel Adams. He twice asked the Coun-
cil to call out the troops to suppress the disturb-
ances caused by their presence, and later regret-
ted that he had not done so on his own authority,
believing that the "massacre" might thereby
have been prevented. He welcomed the repeal
of the major part of the Townshend duties, and
regretted that the duty on tea was retained. The
modification of the non-importation agreements
(1770) pleased him, and he recognized that the
controversy had quieted down. "We have not
been so quiet these five years . . .," he writes in
1771; "if it were not for two or three Adamses
we should do well enough" (Hosmer, p. 192).
Samuel Adams himself was discouraged by the
general apathy, affirming that the real danger
was that the people would think there was no
danger. A wise governor would have made the
most of so favorable a situation; in fact Hutchin-
son was the chief ally of Adams in reviving the
waning controversy. For two years (1770-72)
he engaged in an irritating and futile contro-
versy with the House over its place of meeting,
and other technical points of no importance. He
was more Tory than the ministers, constantly

Hutchinson

complained to his friends in England that "his
Majesty's servants" were not adequately sup-
ported, and insisted that the "great thing now is
to keep up the sense of our constitutional depen-
dence and an opinion that Parliament will main-
tain its supreme authority (Hutchinson Corre-
spondence, III, 112). When Adams labored al-
most alone to keep the dying controversy alive
by writing embittered articles in the journals,
the governor took "much pains to procure writ-
ers to answer the pieces in the newspapers
which do so much mischief" (Hosmer, p. 224).
When Adams organized the correspondence
committees in November 1772 and initiated the
movement by publishing the "Rights of the Col-
onists," Hutchinson gave life to the movement
by delivering before the General Court, on Jan.
6, 1773, an elaborately argued address designed
to prove that since "no line can be drawn be-
tween the supreme authority of Parliament and
the total independence of the colonies," the Par-
liamentary supremacy must be admitted; and
"if the supremacy of Parliament shall no longer
be denied, it will follow that the mere exercise
of its authority can be no grievance" (Hosmer,
pp. 367-68). Learning that Dartmouth, who
understood that the government of Massachu-
setts called for something more than an exercise
in dialectic, disapproved of his action, Hutchin-
son was as much astonished as he was distressed,
having really believed that his address would
accomplish much towards ending the controversy
(Hutchinson Correspondence, III, 443, 498).
His position, already precarious, became unten-
able after the publication of the "Hutchinson
Letters," procured in England and sent to Bos-
ton by Benjamin Franklin [q.v.']. The letters,
six of which were written by Hutchinson to
friends in England during the years 1768-69,
expressed no views not already publicly ex-
pressed, but they revealed the fact, which later
letters would have revealed far more clearly, that
Hutchinson was secretly urging the British gov-
ernment to exert its authority over the colonies
more vigorously. In any case, as Hutchinson
said, had the letters "been Chevy Chase," the
people would have believed them "full of evil
and treason" (Hosmer, p. 278). Meantime the
East India Company had been permitted by Par-
liament to import tea directly into America in
the expectation that by reducing the price the
people would buy English rather than Dutch
tea; and Hutchinson had unwisely used his in-
fluence to obtain consignments for his sons,
Thomas and Elisha, whose tea business he ap-
pears to have largely directed. When the tea
ships arrived, in December 1773, Hutchinson

441