Page:History of Gardner, Massachusetts (1860) - Glazier.djvu/65

Rh those events cannot be forgotten: they have floated down in tradition: they are recounted by the winter fire-side, in the homes of New England: they are inscribed on roll and record in the archives and annals of the State. History, the mirror of the past, reflects, with painful fidelity, the dark as well as the bright objects from departed years; and although we may wish to contemplate only the glowing picture of patriotism and prosperity, the gloomy image of civil commotion is still full in our sight, shadowing the background with its solemn admonition.

The investigation of the causes of the unhappy tumults of 1786, does not belong to the narrative of their local effects on one of the principal scenes of action. But it would be great injustice to omit the statement, that circumstances existed, which palliate, though they do not justify the conduct of those who took up arms against the government of their own establishment. After eight years of war, Massachusetts stood, with the splendor of triumph, in republican poverty, bankrupt in resources, with no revenue but of an expiring currency, and no metal in her treasury more precious than the continental copper, bearing the devices of union and freedom. The country had been drained by taxation for the support of the army of Independence, to the utmost limit of its means; public credit was extinct, manners had become relaxed, trade decayed, manufactures languishing, paper money depreciated to worthlessness, claims on the nation accumulated by the commutation of the pay of officers for securities, with a heavy and increasing pressure of debt resting on Commonwealth, corporations and citizens. The first reviving efforts of commerce overstocked the markets with foreign luxuries and superfluities, sold to those who trusted to the future to supply the ability of