resolutions, recommending to the citizens of Boston to be firm and patient, to the people through the province to assist their brethren in the metropolis, and to all to refrain entirely from the use of British goods, and of other foreign articles subject to a duty; conceiving this to be a lawful and most efficient means of convincing the parent government of their opposition to the recent oppressive measures, and of prevailing on ministers to relax in their arbitrary and severe conduct towards Massachusetts. They also requested the governor to appoint a day for public religious worship and prayer. And as he declined doing it, they themselves recommended the observance of a particular day for that solemn service. But the most important measure adopted at this eventful period, and in preparing which a large committee was occupied through the greater part of the session, was that of choosing five members of the House as delegates to a General Continental Congress; and of giving immediate information thereof to all the other colonies, with a request that they would appoint deputies for the same purpose. The preamble to the resolution for choosing delegates to meet in a General Congress—which was adopted by a vote of a hundred and sixteen to twelve—states concisely the reason which induced the House to adopt this important measure. It was as follows:—
"This House, having duly considered, and being deeply affected with the unhappy differences which have long subsisted and are increasing between Great Britain and the American colonies, are of opinion, that a meeting of committees from the several colonies on this continent is highly expedient and necessary, to consult upon the present state of the country, and the miseries to which we are and must be reduced by the operation of certain acts of Parliament; and to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures, to be by them recommended to all the colonies, for the recovery and establishment of our just rights and liberties civil and religious ; and the restoration of union and harmony between Great Britain and America, which is most ardently desired by all good men."[1]
Thomas Gushing, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, James Bowdoin. and John Adams, were appointed delegates on the part of Massachusetts, to meet similar delegates from the other colonies, in Philadelphia, on the first of September. Gage, ascertaining what was going on, sent his secretary to dissolve the House: that officer, finding the door locked, read the proclamation of the governor on the steps leading to the chamber. This was the last session of the House under royal authority. The members, however, continued in
- ↑ Professor Smyth, in his valuable Lectures on Modern History, gives what he conceives were the causes that led to the war being prosecuted as it was against the American Colonies:—1st, a deplorable ignorance of or inattention to the great leading principles of political economy; 2d, a blind, disgraceful selfishness in regard to mere matters of money and taxes; 3d, an overweening national pride; 4th, very high principles of government; 5th, a certain vulgarity of thinking on political subjects. "These discreditable causes may be said, in a general way, to have led to the destruction of the British empire in America, as far as the legislators and people of England were concerned."—Smyth's "Lectures on Modern History" p. 558, 59.
