fond of business, granite in his decisions, and resolved to be master in
his department. It was easy to surmise that his appointment would hasten
the drift of things toward a crisis. England would not tamely relinquish
her claim to absolute jurisdiction over her colonies. But the bulwarks of
popular liberty were rising in America, and every year saw them
strengthened and more ably manned. English legislative opposition only
defined and solidified the colonial resistance. What was to be the result?
There would be no lack of English statesmen competent to consider it; men
like Pitt, Murray and Townshend were already above the horizon of history.
But it was not by statesmanship that the issue was to be decided. Man is
proud of his intellect; but it is generally observable that it is the
armed hand that settles the political problems of the world.

There were in the colonies men of ability, and of consideration, who were
traitors to the cause of freedom. Such were Thomas Hutchinson, a plausible
hypocrite, not devoid of good qualities, but intent upon filling his
pockets from the public purse; Oliver, a man of less ability but equal
avarice; and William Shirley, the scheming lawyer from England, who had
made America his home in order to squeeze a living out of it. These men
went to England to promote the passage of a law insuring a regular revenue
for the civil list from the colonists, independent of the latter's
approval; the immediate pretext being that money was needed to protect the
colonies against French encroachments. The several assemblies refused to
consent to such a tax; and the question was then raised whether Parliament
had not the right to override the colonists' will. Lord Halifax, the First
Commissioner, was urgent in favor of the proposition; he was an ignorant,
arbitrary man, who laid out a plan for the subjugation of the colonies as
lightly and willfully as he might have directed the ditch-digging and
fence-building on his estates. Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, held that
Parliament had the requisite power; but in the face of the united protest