Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/194

182 them in a cart, thousands following, to the town-house, where the governor and council were in session; carried the effigies solemnly through the building, and thence to the gallows, where, after hanging a while, they were cut down and torn to pieces. All was done quietly, orderly, and with no violence. It was All-Saints Day: two hundred and forty-eight years before, Martin Luther had pilloried the papacy on a church-door at Wittenberg, not knowing what would fall at the sound of his hammer nailing up the Ninety-five Theses.

Nobody would touch the hated stamps. Mr Oliver, the secretary of the province, and "distributor of stamps," had been hanged in effigy before. His stamp-office had already given a name to the sea, "Oliver^s Dock^^ long commemorating the fate of the building. Dismayed by the voice of the people, he resigned his office. Not satisfied with that, the people had him before an immense meeting at Liberty-tree; and at noonday, under the very limb where he had been hung in effigy, before a justice of the peace he took an oath that he never would take any measures …. for enforcing the Stamp Act in America. Then, with three cheers for liberty, Mr Oliver was allowed to return home. He ranked as the third crown-officer in the colony. Where could you find "one of his Majesty's justices of the peace" to administer such an oath before such a "town-meeting"? A man was found to do that deed, and leave descendants to be proud of it; for, after three generations have passed by, the name of Richard Dana is still on the side of liberty.

No more of stamps in Boston at that time. In time of danger, it is thought "a good thing to have a man in the house." Boston had provided herself. There were a good many who did not disgrace the name. Amongst others, there was one of such "obstinacy and inflexible disposition," said Hutchinson, "that he could never be conciliated by any office or gift whatever." Yet Samuel Adams was "not rich, nor a bachelor." There was another, one John Adams, son of a shoemaker at Quincy, not a whit less obstinate or hard to conciliate with gifts. When he heard Otis in that great argument, he felt "ready to take up arms against the Writs of Assistance." One day, the twenty-second of December of that year, he writes in his journal: