Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/288

264 Address to his Majesty and the Parliament, to implore relief." Governor Bernard thought it best to concur in the adoption of this plan. James Otis, with Ruggles and Partridge, were deputed to represent Massachusetts in this Congress.

A popular outbreak soon after, showed how violently the spirit of opposition had begun to work. A large elm tree in Boston, under which the opponents of the stamp tax were accustomed to assemble, soon became famous as "Liberty Tree." Early in the morning of August 14th, two effigies were suspended from the branches of this elm; one was designed for Oliver, secretary of the colony, and appointed stamp distributer; the other, intended for the Earl of Bute, prime minister, was a jack boot, with a head and horns peeping out at the top. Great numbers both from town and country came to see them. The spectators soon entered nto the spirit of the thing. In the evening the whole was cut down and carried in procession by the populace, shouting "liberty and property forever! no stamps!" They next pulled down a new building, lately erected by Mr. Oliver. They then went to his house, before which they beheaded his effigy, and at the same time broke his windows. Eleven days after, similar violences were repeated. The mob attacked the house of Mr. William Story, deputy register of the court of admiralty, broke his windows, forced into his dwelling house, and destroyed the books and files belonging to the said court, and ruined a great part of his furniture. They next proceeded to the house of Benjamin Hallowel, comptroller of the customs, and repeated similar excesses, and drank and destroyed his liquors. They afterwards proceeded to the house of Mr. Hutchinson, and soon demolished it. They carried off his plate, furniture, and apparel, and scattered or destroyed manuscripts, and other curious and useful papers, which for thirty years he had been collecting, an irreparable loss About half a dozen of the meanest of the mob were soon after taken up and committed, but they either broke jail, or otherwise escaped all punishment. The inhabitants of Boston, in a town meeting, expressed their abhorrence of these excesses, and a civic guard was organized to prevent their recurrence: but the rioters, though well known, were never punished, a proof that the community generally, though unwilling to do such things, were not sorry that they had been done by others.

There were similar outbreaks of popular fury in the other colonies. On the 24th of August a gazette extraordinary was published at Providence, with Vox Populi vox Dei, for a motto: effigies were exhibited, and in the evening cut down and burnt. Three days afterwards, the people of Newport conducted effigies of three obnoxious persons in a cart, with halters about their necks, to a gallows near the town house, where they were hung, and after a while cut down and burnt amidst the acclamations of thousands. On the last day of October, a body of people from the country, approached the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the apprehension that the stamps would