HKB
force, to strengthen government. For what? to enable it to enforce stamp acts, tea acts, and other internal regulations, the authority of which the people were determined never to acknowledge.
But what a pity it was, that these worthy gentlemen could not be allowed, from the dearest affection to their native country, to which they had every possible attachment, to go on in profound confidential secrecy, procuring troops to cut our throats, acts of parliament to drain our purses, destroy our charters and assemblies, getting estates and dignities for themselves and their own families, and all the while most devoutly professing to be friends to our charter, enemies to parliamentary taxation, and to all pensions, without being detected? How happy! if they could have annihilated all our charters, and yet have been beloved, nay deified by the people, as friends and advocates for their charters? What masterly politicians! to have made themselves nobles for life, and yet have been thought very sorry, that the two houses were denied the privilege of choosing the council? How sagacious, to get large pensions for themselves, and yet be thought to mourn, that pensions and venality were introduced into the country? How sweet and pleasant! to have been the most popular men in the community, for being staunch and zealous dissenters, true blue Calvinists, and able advocates for public virtue and popular government, after they had introduced an American Episcopate, universal corruption among the leading men, and deprived the people of all share in their supreme legislative council? I mention an Episcopate, for although I do not know that governors Hutchinson and Oliver ever directly solicited for bishops, yet they must have seen, that these would have been one effect, very soon, of establishing the unlimited authority of parliament!
I agree with this writer, that it was not the persons of Bernard, Hutchinson or Oliver, that made them obnoxious; but their principles and practices. And I will agree, that if Chatham, Campden and St. Asaph, (I beg pardon for introducing these reverend names into such company, and for making a supposition which is absurd) had been here, and prosecuted such schemes, they would have met with contempt and execration from this people. But when he says, "that had the intimations in those letters been attended to, we had now been as happy a people as good government could make us," it is too gross to make us angry. We can do nothing but smile. Have not these intimations been attended to? Have not fleets and armies been sent here, whenever they requested? Have not governors', lieutenant governors', secretaries', judges', attorney generals', and solicitor generals' salaries been paid out of the revenue as they solicited? Have not taxes been laid, and continued? Have not English liberties been abridged as Hutchinson desired? Have not "penalties of another kind" been inflicted, as he desired? Has not our charter been destroyed, and the council put into the king's hands, as Bernard requested? In short, almost all the wild mock pranks of this desperate triumvirate have been attended to and adopted, and we are now as miserable as tyranny can well make us. That Bernard came here with the affections of New Jersey, I never heard nor read, but in this writer. His abilities were considerable, or he could not have done such extensive mischief. His true British honesty and punctuality will be acknowledged by none, but such as owe all their importance to flattering him.