The difficulties with Massachusetts were a century old. The colony charter had been annulled—her territory on the Merrimack and the Narragansett had been transferred to neighboring colonies, and the men whom she had elected to preside in her House of Representatives had been repeatedly rejected.
There had been from the first an ardent desire in the colony to establish a free Christian commonwealth, and on the part of England to maintain, if not extend, the power of the British Parliament. In May, 1774, as the representative of the latter purpose, General Gage arrived in Boston, and was soon followed by considerable bodies of troops. In August of the same year measures were taken for a Provincial Congress, to concert and execute an effectual plan for counteracting the system of despotism which had been introduced. The Congress instructed the general officers “effectually to oppose and resist” all attempts to execute the obnoxious acts of the British Parliament; and by a singular coincidence on the same day, February 9, 1775, the Parliament pledged the lives and property of the Commons to the support of these laws. On the side of the Americans, the courts were declared unconstitutional and their officers traitors—and the practice of the military art was earnestly recommended.
By the 1st of September, 1774, the issue was fairly presented. The claim on one side was the supremacy of the British Parliament, and on the other the supremacy of the American people. Parliament claimed the right to legislate for or over the colonies in all cases whatsoever; this right the colonists denied. Parliament had asserted its supremacy by the passage, in May, 1774, of “An act for the better regulating the government of the province of Massachusetts Bay,” and “An act for the more impartial administration of justice in said province.” Submission to these acts was the test. They would not execute themselves. Their precise character
