with such indignity for accepting the office on other terms that it was thought to have shortened his life.

But the idea of equality in political rights between England and the colonies could not be comprehended by the English officials of that day; and in November, about a month after Pitt's retirement, the board of trade reported to the king against the tenure of good behavior, as "a pernicious proposition," "subversive of all true policy," "and tending to lessen the just dependence of the colonies upon the government of the mother country." The representation found favor with George; and, as the first-fruits of the new system, on the ninth of December the instruction went forth, through Egremont, to all colonial governors, to grant no judicial commissions but during pleasure.

To make the tenure of the judicial office the king's will was to make the bench of judges the instruments of the prerogative, and to subject the administration of justice throughout all America to the influence of an arbitrary and irresponsible power. The assembly of New York rose up against the encroachment, deeming it a deliberate step towards despotic authority; the standing instruction they resolved should be changed, or they, on their part, would grant no salary whatever to the judges.

1762.

Things are come to a crisis," wrote Pratt, in January, 1762, chiefly intent on securing a good salary. "If I cannot be supported with a competent salary, the office must be abandoned, and his majesty's prerogative must suffer." "Why," asked Colden, "should the chief justices of Nova Scotia and Georgia have certain and fixed salaries from the crown, and a chief justice of so considerable a province as this be left to beg his bread of the people?" And reporting to the board of trade the source of opposition in New York, "For some years past," said he, "three popular lawyers, educated in Connecticut, who have strongly imbibed the independent principles of that country, calumniate the administration in every exercise of the prerogative, and get the applause of the mob by propagating the doctrine that all authority is derived from the people." These "three popular lawyers" were William

Livingston, John Morin Scott, and one who afterwards turned aside from the career of patriotism, the historian William Smith.

The news of the resignation of Pitt, who was "almost idolized" in America, heightened the rising jealousy and extended it through the whole continent. "We have such an idea of the general corruption," wrote Ezra Stiles, a dissenting minister in Rhode Island, "we know not how to confide in any person below the crown.' "You adore the Oliverian times," said Bernard to Mayhew, at Boston. "I adore Him alone who is before all times," answered Mayhew; and at the same time avowed his zeal for the principles of "the glorious Revolution" of 1688, especially for "the freedom of speech and of writing."

The old Puritan strife with prelacy was renewed; and Presbyterians and Congregationalists were jealous of the favor shown by the royal governors to the established church. In New York, the college was under Episcopal direction; as New England's Cambridge was in the hands of dissenters, Bernard sealed a charter for another seminary in the interior. A fund of two thousand pounds was subscribed to a society, which the legislature of Massachusetts had authorized, for propagating knowledge among the Indians; but the king interposed his negative, and reserved the red men for the Anglican form of worship. Mayhew, on the other hand, marshalled public opinion against bishops; while Massachusetts, under the guidance of Otis, dismissed the Episcopalian Bollan, its pedantic but honest agent, and, intending to select a dissenter who should be able to employ for the protection of its liberties the political influence of the non-conformists in England, it intrusted its affairs to Jasper Mauduit, who, though a dissenter, was connected through his brother, Israel Mauduit, with Jenkinson and Bute and Mansfield and the king.

But the great subject of discontent was the enforcement of the acts of trade by the court of admiralty; where a royalist judge determined questions of property without a jury, on information furnished by crown officers, and derived his own emoluments exclusively from his portion of

the forfeitures which he himself had full power to declare. The governor, too, was sure to lean to the side of large seizures; for he by law enjoyed a third of all the fines imposed on goods that were condemned. The legislature, angry that Hutchinson, as chief justice, in defiance of the plain principles of law, should lend himself to the schemes of the crown officers, began to perceive how many offices. he had accumulated in his own hands. Otis, whose mind was deeply imbued with the writings of Montesquieu, pointed out the mischief of uniting in the same person executive, legislative, and judicial powers; but four or five years passed away before the distinction was much heeded, and in the mean time the judges were punished by a reduction of their salaries. The general writs of assistance, which were clearly illegal, would have been prohibited by a provincial enactment but for the negative of the governor.

The commotion, which at first was confined to Boston, was expected to extend to the other ports. The people were resolved that their trade should no longer be kept under restrictions, and began to talk of procuring themselves justice.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE KING DRIVES OUT THE NEWCASTLE WHIGS. THE DAWN OF THE NEW REPUBLIC.

1762.

THE new ministers were careful at first to adopt the orders of William Pitt, and his plan for conducting the war. He had infused his own spirit into the army and navy of England; the strings which he had struck with power still vibrated; his light, like that of "an annihilated star," still

shone brilliantly to the world; and it was without 1762. fear that, in the first days of January, 1762, England, justified by the avowed alliance between the branches of the house of Bourbon, extended the strife to the peninsula and the colonies of Spain.

Behold, then, at last, the great league of the Roman Catholic powers, France, Spain, Austria, and the German Empire, the mighty authorities of the middle age, blessed by the consecrating prayers of the see of Rome, and united in arms; yet, after the alliance was made, the policy of Roman bigotry could not control the war. New principles exerted their force. The compact between France and Spain had been made under the influence of Choiseul, the enemy of Jesuits, and the patron of philosophy; and the federation of the weaker maritime states presented itself to the world as the protector of equality on the seas. England, on the other hand, had no motive to continue hostilities but the love of rapine and conquest; and on the twelfth of January, about a week after the declaration against Spain, the king directed measures to be taken to detach Austria from the house of Bourbon, and recover its alliance for England. The proposition was made through Sir Joseph Yorke, at the Hague, who was to tempt the empress by "the hope of

some ulterior acquisitions in Italy." The experienced diplomatist promptly hinted to his employers that the offer of the restoration of Silesia would be more effective. A clandestine proposition from England to Austria was a treachery to Frederic; it became doubly so, when success in the negotiation would have pledged England's influence to compel Frederic to the retro-cession of Silesia. To promise acquisitions in Italy, with all whose powers England was at peace, was an outrage on the law of nations; the proposition, if accepted, equally implied perfidy in Austria towards France. "Her imperial majesty and her minister," said Kaunitz, "cannot understand the proper meaning of this confidential overture of the English ;" and it did not remain a secret.

1762.

No one desired the cessation of hostilities more than Frederic, if he could but secure his own possessions. "To terminate this deadly war advantageously," thus he wrote, in January, 1762, to George," there is need of nothing but constancy; but we must persevere to the end. I see difficulties still without number; instead of appalling me, they encourage me by the hope of overcoming them." Ignorant of continental affairs, George III. and his favorite held it necessary to break or bend the firmness of will of the king of Prussia, and with that view invoked the interposition of Russia. The female autocrat of the north, the Empress Elizabeth, who during her reign abolished the punishment of death, but by her hatred of the Prussian king brought provinces into misery and tens of thousands to massacre on battle-grounds, a childish person, delighting in dress and new clothes, in intoxication and the grossest excesses of lewdness, was no more. So soon as it was known that she had been succeeded by her nephew, Peter III., who cherished an unbounded admiration for Frederic, the British minister at St. Petersburg was provided with a credit of one hundred thousand pounds to be used as bribes, and was instructed by Bute to moderate the excessive devotedness of the emperor to Frederic; the strength of that friendship was a source of anxiety.

Grenville and others were determined to get rid of the