But power vested in some rulers can brook no check. To assert
the most undoubted rights of human nature, and of the British
Constitution, they term faction; and having embarrassed a free
government by their own impolitic measures, they fly to military
power."
It may be asked, What came of the recommendations of Bernard? "I
know," Hutchinson wrote, (May 6, 1769,) "the Ministry, when I wrote
you last, had determined to push it [the alteration of the
Constitution] in Parliament. They laid aside the thought a little
while. The latter end of February they took it up again. I have reason
to think it is laid aside a second time." There was a third time also.
The Patriots for six years endured a steady aggression on their
constitutional rights, which had the single object in view of checking
the republican idea, when the scheme was taken up and pressed to a
consummation. 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.
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