at New York, suggested such a requisition of quit-rents as would be virtually a general land-tax, by act of parliament. "While I can wield this weapon," cried Livingston, the large landholder, grasping his sword, "England shall never get it but with my heart's blood." In the assembly at New York, which had been chosen in the previous year, the popular party was strengthened by those who battled with Epis

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copacy; and the Livingstons, descendants of Scottish Presbyterians, were recognised as its leaders. Of these were Philip, the popular alderman, a merchant of New York; and William, who represented his brother's manor, a scholar, and an able lawyer, the incorruptible advocate of civil and religious liberty, in manners plain, by his nature republican. Nor may Robert R. Livingston, of Duchess county, be forgotten, an only son, heir to very large estates, a man of spirit and honor, keenly sensitive to right, faultless as a son, a son-in-law, a husband, possessing a gentleness of nature and a candor that ever endeared him to the friends of freedom.

In the opinion of Cadwallader Colden, the president of the council, "the democratical or popular part" of the American constitution "was too strong for the other parts, and in time might swallow them both up, and endanger the dependence of the plantations on the crown of Great Britain." His remedies were " a perpetual revenue," fixed salaries, and "an hereditary council of privileged landholders, in imitation of the lords of parliament." At the same time, he warned against the danger of applying a standing revenue to favorites, or bestowing beneficial employments on strangers alone, to the great discouragement of the people of the plantations. Influenced by a most "favorable opinion" of Colden's "zeal for the rights of the crown,' "Lord Halifax conferred on him the vacant post of lieutenant-governor of New York.

In the neighboring province of New Jersey, Francis Bernard, as its governor, a royalist, selected for office by Halifax, had from 1758, the time of his arrival in America, been brooding over the plans for enlarging royal power, which he afterwards reduced to form. But Pennsylvania,

of all the colonies, led the van of what the royalists called "Democracy." Its assembly succeeded in obtaining its governor's assent to their favorite assessment bill, by which the estates of the proprietaries were subjected to taxation. They revived and continued for sixteen years their excise, which was collected by officers of their own appointment; and they kept its "very considerable" proceeds solely and entirely at their own disposal. By other bills they took from the governor influence over the judiciary, by making good behavior its tenure of office. Maryland repeated the same contests, and adopted the same policy.

Already the negative had been wrested from the council of Pennsylvania, and from the proprietaries themselves. The latter, therefore, in March, 1760, ap- 1760. pealed to the king against seventeen acts that had been passed in 1758 and 1759, "as equally affecting the royal prerogative, their chartered immunities, and their rights as men." When in May, 1760, Franklin appeared with able counsel to defend the liberties of his adopted home before the board of trade, he was encountered by Pratt, the attorney-general, and Charles Yorke, the son of Lord Hardwicke, then the solicitor-general, who appeared for the prerogative and the proprietaries. Of the acts complained of, it was held that some "were unjust to the private fortunes of the Penns," and all, by their dangerous encroachments, "fatal to the constitution in a public consideration." In behalf of the people, it was pleaded that the consent of the governor, who was the deputy of the proprietaries, included the consent of his principals. To this it was replied, that his consent was fraudulent, for the amount of his emoluments had depended on his compliance; that it was subversive of the constitution for the assembly first to take to themselves the supervision of the treasure, and then to employ it to corrupt the governor. Even the liberal Pratt, as well as Yorke, "said much of the intention to establish a democracy, in place of his majesty's government," and urged upon "the proprietaries their duty of resistance." The lords of trade found that in Pennsylvania, as in every other colony, "the delegates far exceeded the

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largest claims of the house of commons, not only by raising the money, but by investing themselves with the sole application of it, and usurping by this means the most valuable prerogative of the executive power." The board, therefore, in June, assured the cabinet ministers that "experience had shown how vain it was to negotiate away his majesty's authority, since every new concession became a foundation for some new demand, and that of some new dispute ;" and they recommended that "the constitution should be brought back to its proper principles, to restore to the crown, in the person of the proprietaries, its just prerogative, to check the growing influence of assemblies by distinguishing, what they are perpetually confounding, the executive from the legislative power.

When, in July, the subject was discussed before the privy council, Lord Mansfield made the extraordinary motion, "that the attorney and solicitor general be instructed to report their opinion whether his majesty could not disap" but prove of parts of an act and confirm other parts of it; so violent an attempt to extend the king's prerogative, at the expense of the people of the colonies and the proprietaries, met with no favor.

At last, of the seventeen acts objected to, the six which encroached most on the executive power were negatived by the king; but by the influence of Lord Mansfield, and against the advice of the board of trade, the assessment bill, which taxed the estates of the proprietaries, was made the subject of an informal capitulation between them and the agent of the people of Pennsylvania, and was included among those that were confirmed.

There were two men in England whose relation to these transactions is especially memorable: Pitt, the secretary of state for America; and Edmund Burke, a man of letters, at that time in the service of William Gerard Hamilton, the colleague of Lord Halifax. Burke shared the opinions of the board of trade, that all the offensive acts of Pennsylvania should be rejected, and censured with severity the temporizing facility of Lord Mansfield as a feeble and unmanly surrender of just authority. The time was near at hand

when the young Irishman's opinions upon the extent of British authority over America would become of moment. Great efforts were made to win the immediate interposition of William Pitt, so that he might appall the colonies by his censure, or mould them by British legislation. After diligent and long-continued inquiry, I cannot find that he ever consented to menace any restriction on the freedom of the people in the colonies, or even so much as expressed an opinion that they were more in fault than the champions of prerogative. So little did he interest himself in the strifes of Pennsylvania, that, during his ministry, Franklin was never admitted to his presence. Every one of his letters which I have seen - and I think I have seen every considerable one to every colony-is marked by liberality and respect for American rights; and the governor of Maryland, who desired taxation by parliament, and had appealed to the secretary, "in hopes that measures would have been taken to end the dispute " between the officers of the crown and the assembly, was left to complain "that his majesty's ministers had not as yet interfered," that Pitt would "only blame both houses for their failure to make appropriations." The threat of interference, on the close of the war, was incessant from Halifax and the board of trade; I can trace no such purpose to Pitt.

Yet a circular from the secretary, who was informed by Amherst that the French islands were supplied during the war with provisions from America, was connected with the first strong expressions of discontent in New England. American merchants were incited, by the French commercial regulations, to engage in the carrying-trade of the French sugar islands; and they gained by it immense profits. This trade was protected by flags of truce, which were granted by the colonial governors. "For each flag," wrote Horatio Sharpe, who longed to share in the spoils, "for each flag, my neighbor, Governor Denny, receives a handsome douceur; and I have been told that Governor Bernard, in particular, has also done business in the same way." "I," said Fauquier, of Virginia, "have never been prevailed on to grant one; though I have been tempted by

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large offers, and pitiful stories of relations lying in French dungeons for want of such flags." In vehement and imperative words, Pitt rebuked the practice, not with a view permanently to restrain the trade of the continent with the foreign islands, but only in time of war to distress the enemy by famine.

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In August, the same month in which this impassioned interdict was issued, Francis Bernard, whom the board of trade favored as the obsequious friend to the English church and to British authority, was removed to the government of Massachusetts. In September of that year, Bernard manifested the purpose of his appointment, by informing the legislature of Massachusetts "that they derived blessings from their subjection to Great Britain." Subjection to Great Britain was a new doctrine in New England, whose people professed loyalty to the king, but shunned a new master in the collective people of England. The council, in its reply, owned only a beneficial "relation to Great Britain;" the house of representatives spoke vaguely of "the connection between the mother country and the provinces, on the principles of filial obedience, protection, and justice."

The colonists had promised themselves, after the conquest of Canada, that they should "sit quietly under their own vines and fig-trees, with none to make them afraid;” and already they began to fear "aggressions on their freedom. To check illicit trade, the officers of the customs had even demanded of the supreme court general writs of assistance; but the writs had been withheld, because Stephen Sewall, the chief justice of the province, a man of great integrity, re*spected and beloved by the people, doubted their legality.

In September, Sewall died, to the universal sorrow of the province; and the character of his successor would control the decision of the court on the legality of writs of assistance, involving the enforcing of the British acts of trade by the utmost exertion of arbitrary and irresponsible discretion, as well as the degree of political support which the judiciary would grant to the intended new system of administration. Had the first surviving judge been pro