United States or Jamaica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
South Carolina, Georgia, and Rhode Island expressed a willingness to concur in any measures which Congress might think best calculated to promote the general welfare. In the course of May town-meetings throughout Massachusetts expressed opinions unanimously in favour of independence.
This act provided that members of the council should be appointed by the royal governor, that they should be paid by the crown and thus be kept subservient to it, that the principal executive and judicial officers should be likewise paid by the crown, and that town-meetings should be prohibited except for the sole purpose of electing town officers.
The Parliamentary acts of 1774, as to town-meetings, trial by jury, and the Council of Massachusetts, aimed a deadly blow at the local self-government. It was the subjugation that John Adams judged was symbolized by the military rule of 1768. Not until they saw this, did the generation of that day feel justified in invoking the terrible arbiter of war. This was in the majesty of revolution.
They controlled the clubs, and there was not a social company or political club that did not claim to have to do with the Government: they controlled the town-meetings, and these were the instrumentalities of rebellion: and the town-meetings controlled the legislature, and this controlled the Province. Then the local press was filled with incendiary matter from the cabinet of the faction.
Hustled have we been, till driven from town-meetings; dirty water has been cast upon our ruffles by a Whig chambermaid; John Hancock's coachman seizes every opportunity to bespatter us with mud; daily are we hooted by the unbreeched rebel brats; and narrowly, once, did our gray hairs escape the ignominy of tar and feathers.
In some of the western states settled by New England people, town-meetings are held, though their powers are somewhat less extensive than in New England. In the settlement of Virginia it was attempted to copy directly the parishes and vestries, boroughs and guilds of England.
Why not insist everywhere that they be used as places of discussion, such as of old took place in the town-meetings to which everybody went and where every public officer was freely called to account? The schoolhouse, which belongs to all of us, is a natural place in which to gather to consult over our common affairs.
But while he was working his way to position and influence, more exciting themes began to attract his attention. With the earliest signs of coming conflict he took a determined stand on the Colonial side. In the town-meetings of the day he seems to have been prominent, and his name appears on most of the important committees appointed by the town in reference to public affairs.
Thus, owing to such representations, while the people of Boston were deliberating in the great town-meetings of June, orders were on their way to General Gage, whose head-quarters were in New York, to place troops in Castle William, to station a detachment in Boston, and to keep a naval force in the harbor.
Similar expressions of opinion came from other colonies, and the action of Massachusetts was awaited with breathless interest. Many town-meetings were held in Boston, and the owner of the ships was ordered to take them away without unloading; but the collector contrived to fritter away the time until the nineteenth day, and then refused a clearance.
Word Of The Day