Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
friends at home for neglecting the work of publicity. “Your presses
have been too long silent. What were your Committees of Correspondence
about? I hear nothing of circular Letters--of joynt Committees &c.
Such Methods have in times past raised the Spirits of the people--drawn
off their Attention from picking up Pins, & directed their Views to
great objects.”[271]
With such neglect Samuel Adams could not be charged. As clerk of the
inevitable Committee of Grievances appointed by the Boston town meeting
in accordance with his prearranged plan, he wrote those plain-spoken
papers that stirred the wrath of Tory gentlemen; as clerk of the
assembly he was the chief author of successive state papers, which
under guise of replying to the prerogative principles of Bernard
and Hutchinson, set forth in masterly fashion the whole theory of
colonial rights; and as Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence
he appealed to his fellow Americans of every colony. Yet his official
writings constitute only a minor part of his total work. His letters
were innumerable and his newspaper articles crowded the desk of every
friendly editor. The labors undergone and the energy consumed were
enormous. It was no holiday task to create and guide a public opinion
that was so constantly falling into apathy.
Running through the third volume of Hutchinson’s _History of
Massachusetts Bay_ is a note of indignant protest at “the machinations
of selfish and designing men” who at the precise time when the feeling
between the two countries was friendliest, and an amicable settlement
of differences seemed likeliest, were assiduous to breed fresh discord
and frustrate the hopes of peace. That he had Adams chiefly in mind
there can be little doubt. During the “calm interval” of the summer
of ’71, when, according to Hutchinson, “the province was more free
from real evils” than for years, and when “to keep up a spirit of
discontent, recourse was had, either to evils merely imaginary, or to
such as were at a distance, and feared rather than felt,”[272] Adams
wrote the ablest of his many able newspaper articles.[273] In no other
phase of his work is the craft of the man so evident as in these
anonymous newspaper discussions. There was cunning as well as caution
in his method. Changing his style with every fresh quill and every
new pen name, putting forth an idea for the sake of denying it, then
examining its merits cautiously, and finally advocating it boldly, he
created like Falstaff a host of patriots out of a single Bostonian in
brown homespun, making it appear that many were troubled over evils
that were visible only to him. On occasion his style possesses the
light touch, the leisurely detail, the easy pleasantry of a Spectator
essay;[274] again, there is a note of biting irony and studied
insult;[275] and again, there is dignified discussion in which Adams
argues dispassionately with his countrymen, or pleads with them to
stand together in defense of the common welfare. But in whatever vein
or under whatever disguise he wrote, the conclusion of every argument
was the implied suggestion, how much better it would be if the American
people were to take into their own hands the management of their
affairs.
But before the colonial could be induced to strike for governmental
control, the old psychology of subserviency to the ruling class must
be uprooted; and an effective means to that end was to lay bare the
selfish motives of the aristocracy. To stimulate what we call today
class consciousness was a necessary preliminary to a democratic
psychology; and to this task Adams devoted every energy. The ways
of the iconoclast are rarely lovely, and the breaking of idols is
certain to wound sensitive souls. There was abundant justification
for the charge of Hutchinson that “robbing men of their characters”
was the “patriotic business” of Samuel Adams; but he missed the point
in attributing to him the motive, _Gubernatorum vituperatio populo
placet_. The respect that attached to Bernard and Hutchinson by
virtue of their official positions was a powerful ally of ministerial
authority; their words carried weight beyond the sanction of their
logic; for the good of America their power must be destroyed. Doubtless
Adams was ungenerous in attack; certainly he was vindictive in his
hates; but the cold record as we read it today justifies one in the
belief that the men whom he attacked were tools of the ministry,
and must be struck down if the rights of Massachusetts were to be
preserved. And it was due to the bitter denunciations of Adams that
Thomas Hutchinson was driven from his native land and forced to take
refuge in England, the best hated man in all the colonies.
But it was not enough to pull down the courtly Hutchinson, for behind
the governor was a group of lawyers and judges, equally subservient
to prerogative, adepts in the art of interpreting away rights by due
process of law. It became part of the day’s work, therefore, to lay
open the sacred precincts of the courts to common inspection; to create
a public opinion to review judicial decisions when those decisions
were political rather than legal. It was a startling innovation for a
private citizen to assert in the public press that “_state-lawyers_,
attorneys and sollicitors general, & persons advanced to the highest
stations in the courts of law, _prostitute_ the honor of the
profession, become _tools of ministers_, and employ their talents for
_explaining away_, if possible, the Rights of a kingdom.” Never before
had the integrity of the colonial courts been openly attacked and
the motives of the judiciary impugned. But it was far more startling
for Adams to lay down the thesis, that in matters which concern the
general welfare, the letter of the law is not to be considered final,
and “the opinions ... and determinations of the greatest Sages and
Judges of the law in the Exchequer Chamber, ought not to be considered
as decisive or binding ... any further, than they are consonant to
natural reason.”[276] If Franklin was concerned to create a new
economics in harmony with democratic needs, Samuel Adams was concerned
to democratize the New England law. He was dissatisfied with a legal
system created by a Tory past, and that had lately received a fresh
Tory impress at the hands of Blackstone. Such a body of law could not
answer the needs of a free people; it must be reshaped to conform to
new needs. And the conclusion towards which his thinking pointed was
the principle of a referendum of judicial decisions, for how otherwise
could it be determined whether a given decision were “consonant to
natural reason”?
Samuel Adams was little given to striking at the air, and he set
himself to the work of cutting the claws of the more obnoxious judges
with the same cool skill that marked his baiting of the governor.
Certain of them who held plural offices he maneuvered out of the
Council, on the ground that they ought not to exercise both legislative
and judicial functions; and when Bernard protested that they had been
members of the Council for years and by reason of “their knowledge of
the public business, were almost necessary to the body,” he replied
that they were to be released “from the cares and perplexities
of politics ... to make further advances in the knowledge of the
law”--which thrust, in view of the notorious fact that few of them had
been trained in the law, but had risen to the bench through political
influence, must be reckoned a palpable hit.[277] Others beyond his
immediate reach found their characters assailed and their motives
aspersed, until popular respect for them was destroyed; and the unlucky
judges who accepted payment from the royal chest found such a hue and
cry raised against them that they were driven to make choice between
the royal guineas or answering to the mob--a rude but effective way of
stimulating their loyalty to the commonwealth. In short, this “master
of the puppets,” measuring the power of the judges and fearing their
prerogative bias, did not scruple over ways and means of rendering them
more responsive to the popular will, which in the eyes of the best
people of Boston was no less than incendiary.
The work of Samuel Adams was largely done before the word democrat was
given vogue by the French Revolution, and he cautiously refrained from
using it; nevertheless he was probably the most thoroughgoing democrat
of his generation of Americans. He was wholly persuaded that the
sovereign people have a right to change their fundamental law, together
with the interpretation and administration of it, whenever they
desire; and that pending such change it was well to nullify an act of
prerogative subversive of their interests. “We contend, that the People
& their Representatives have a Right to withstand the abusive Exercise
of a legal & constitutional Prerogative of the Crown,” he argued in
reply to Hutchinson; “whenever instructions cannot be complyed with,
without injuring the people, they cease to be binding.”[278] From the
necessary corollary, that the people are competent to judge of their
own good and manage their own affairs, Adams did not shrink. Stated
thus in general terms, the theory possessed no novelty. The sovereignty
of the people had long been a staple of Whiggish theory; but Adams gave
to the doctrine democratic significance. The people, in his philosophy,
were something more than the wealthy and cultured minority to whom the
Whigs appealed; they were the mass of men--the yeoman, the tradesman,
the mechanic--all that multitude of homespun folk who had hitherto been
mere pawns in the political game. Such a passage as this, written four
years before Lexington, reads like Tom Paine and his doctrine of the
_res publica_:
The _multitude_ I am speaking of, is the _body of the people_--no
contemptible multitude--for whose sake government is instituted;
or rather, who have themselves erected it, solely for their own
good--to whom even kings and all in subordination to them, are
strictly speaking, servants and not masters.... Philanthrop
[Jonathan Sewall] I think, speaks somewhat unintelligently, when
he tells us that the well being and happiness of the whole depends
upon _subordination_; as if mankind submitted to government for the
sake of being subordinate.... Mankind have entered into political
societies, rather for the sake of restoring _equality_.... I am not
of levelling principles: But I am apt to think, that constitution
of civil government which admits equality in the most extensive
degree, consistent with the true design of government, is the
best.[279]
Accepting the sovereignty of the people, Adams was led to a pure
democracy, based on the town meeting. He rejected every form of “mixt
government,” whether in the form of king, lords and commons, or in
the form of constitutional checks and balances. That sober men should
profess to prefer the dominion of the few to the rule of all, he could
not understand. “I find everywhere some Men, who are afraid of a free
Government,” he said in 1776, “lest it be perverted, and made Use of
as a Cloke for Licenciousness. The fear of the Peoples abusing their
Liberty is made an Argument against their having the Enjoyment of it;
as if anything were so much to be dreaded by Mankind as Slavery.”[280]
Democracy he believed was inevitable, for “in these times of Light
and Liberty, every man chuses to see and judge for himself.”[281]
He was quite untroubled by any fear of the tyranny of the mass; he
was a good enough historian to know that it is always the minority
and not the mass that creates tyranny. Though Toryism might infect
the government circles, and aristocracy appeal to the wealthy and
ambitious, the great body of Massachusetts people were democratic, and