applied.) The Boston Port Bill was cruel in itself, highly tyrannical, and a mean appeal to the jealousy of other towns and provinces, in which it failed, to their infinite credit, and only exasperated to the last point of endurance the sensibilities of a brave and generous people. The Restraining Acts restricted our commerce, and sought to banish us from the fisheries.

But bad as were these well-known measures, and dangerous to peace and liberty, it was not they that aimed the fatal blow at our accustomed rights and liberties, the blow that must be fatal either to our system of selfgovernment and home rule, or to parliamentary and kingly omnipotence,and placed the two systems face to face in irreconcilable conflict. The acts of 1774, generically known as the Regulation Acts, were radical and revolutionary. They went to the foundations of our public system, and sought to reconstruct it from the base on a theory of kingly and parliamentary omnipotence.

Let me recall to your attention what these acts were; for although the Stamp Act, the Tea Tax, and Boston Port Bill, and the Restraining Acts, and the Military Act had alarmed and exasperated the people, this monument on this field commemorates resistance to the Reconstruction Acts of 1774.

The councillors had been chosen by the people, through their representatives. By the new law they were to be appointed by the king, and to hold at his pleasure. The superior judges were to hold at the will of the king, and to be dependent upon his will for the amount and payment of their salaries; and the inferior judges to be removable by the royal governor at his discretion, he himself holding at the king's will. The sheriffs were to be appointed by the royal governor, and to hold at his will. The juries hau been selected by the inhabitants of the towns: they were now to be selected by the new sheriffs, mere creatures of the royal governor. Offenders against the peace, and against the lives and persons of our people, had been tried here by our courts and juries; and in the memorable case of the Soldiers' Trial for the firing in King's Street in March, 1770, we had proved ourselves capable of doing justice to our oppressors. By the new act, persons charged with capital crimes, and royal officers, civil or military, charged with offences in the execution of the royal laws or warrants, could be transferred for trial to England, or to some other of the Colonies. But the deepest-reaching provision of the acts was that aimed at the town-meetings. They were no longer to be parliaments of freemen to discuss matters of public interest, to instruct their representatives, and look to the redress of grievances. They were prohibited, except the two annual meetings of March and May, and were then only to elect officers; and no other meetings could be held unless by the written permission of the royal governor; and no matters could be considered unless specially sanctioned in the permission.

Am I not right in saying that these acts sought a radical revolution, a fundamental reconstruction of our ancient political system? They sought to change self-government into government by the king, and for home rule to substitute absolute rule at Westminster and St. James's Palace. They gave the royal governor and his council here powers which the king and his council could not exercise in Great Britain,-powers from which the British nobles and commons had fought out their exemption, and to which they would never submit. The British Annual Register, the best authority of that day on political history, says, that, by this series of acts against the Colonists, "their ancient constitutions were destroyed," and they were

"deprived of the rights they had ever been taught to revere and hold sacred."

Nor were these acts mere declarations. They were to be enforced, and at once, and absolutely. The Military Acts provided for quartering the troops upon the towns. In February, 1775, a resolution of parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion, and pledged the lives and property of Englishmen to its suppression. This resolution was little short of a declaration of war. The instructions of Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of state for the Colonies, to Gen. Gage, the royal governor, ran thus: "The sovereignty of the king over the Colonies requires a full and absolute submission." Gage writes to Lord Dartmouth, "The time for conciliation, moderation, and reasoning is over. . . The forces must take the field;' "Civil government is near its end." He advised that the king send twenty thousand men to Massachusetts, and with these he would undertake to enforce the new system, disarm the colonists, and arrest the chief traitors, and send them to London for trial. A force of five thousand regulars was gathered at Boston, and more were coming, under distinguished leaders. The Common was occupied, the Neck fortified, and Boston was under martial law. Gen. Gage was authorized to order the troops to fire upon the people. The people by peaceful means and moral coercion, not without intimidation, but without bloodshed, prevented the new system of legislature, jurors, judges, and executive officers, going into effect; and Gen. Gage attempted to seat the judges and the new officers by the troops. The people refused to serve on the juries, and few, even of the royalists, dared to accept the offices of judge, councillor, or sheriff. The people continued to hold their town-meetings, and organized county-meetings and a Provincial Congress, and Gage resolved to disperse them by the bayonets of the regulars. Troops were sent to Salem to disperse a meeting, but they arrived too late. His proclamation forbade the people attending unauthorized meetings, disobedience "to be answered at their utmost peril." By another proclamation, he had ordered the arrest and securing for trial of all who might sign or publish, or invite others to sign, the covenant of non-importation; and the troops were to do it. He was ordered, from home, to take possession of every fort, to seize all military stores, arrest and imprison all thought to have committed treason, to repress the rebellion by force, and, generally, to substitute more coercive measures" without waiting for the aid of the civil magistrates." In short, Massachusetts was placed under martial law, to be enforced by the king's troops; and all for the purpose of changing radically, by imperial power, the fundamental institutions of the people, in which they had grown up, which they had wisely, safely, and justly administered, and on which their liberties depended.

We were not the revolutionists. The king and parliament were the revolutionists. They were the radical innovators. We were the conservators of existing institutions. They were seeking to overthrow, and reconstruct on a theory of parliamentary omnipotence. We stood upon the defence of what we had founded and built up under their acquiescence, and without which we could not be the free and self-governing people we had always been. We broke no chain. We prepared to strike down any hand that might attempt to lay one upon us. There was not one institution, law, or custom, political or social, from the mountain-tops to the sea-shore, that we cared to change. We were then content to go on as parts of the British empire, holding that slack and easy allegiance we had always held, on the old terms of self-government and home rule. It was not until more than a

year after Lexington and Bunker Hill, that, finding the two things hopelessly inconsistent, we declared our dynastic independence, and in that sense and for that purpose only, became revolutionists.

Against these subversive revolutionary measures, the colonists prepared to resist by force, for to that they knew it must come. Meetings, caucuses, and congresses of towns, counties, of the province, and of all the provinces, became the order of the day. They were all illegal under the new system, and we held them at our peril. The Provincial Congress collected military stores, called on the towns to organize the town companies, and began to organize "the Army of Massachusetts." The old militia, recognized by the royal governor, had disappeared, and the people's militia was fast forming, still inchoate; but it was illegal under the new system, and we joined it at our peril. Gage determined to disarm and disperse the new militia, to destroy the military stores, and, in short, as Lord Dartmouth suggested, to effect by the troops "a general disarming of the colonists." These declarations began to be put into execution. The troops marched out into the country, to show themselves to the people. A force of eleven hundred visited Jamaica Plain. A body of one hundred was permanently quartered at Marshfield, in the Old Colony. The troops seized our powder at Charlestown, and two field-pieces at Cambridge. A few weeks before the 19th of April, a large force was sent to Salem to destroy the military stores collected there; the militia gathered, the people thronged the way, obstructions were interposed, and the force withdrew without bloodshed. The troops cut off supplies intended for us, and we cut off supplies intended for them. Still, so far, there had been no conflict. No irretrievable act had been done. Tudor says, in his Life of Otis, that notwithstanding the political excitement which continued for ten years with hardly an interruption; notwithstanding the hot zeal of the Sons of Liberty, the bitter opposition of as zealous loyalists, the presence of the military, cases of individual collision with the soldiers, and the seizure of stores, - still, "throughout this whole period of ferment, not a single human life was taken by the inhabitants, either by assassination, popular tumult, or public execution."

"If in support

The convention of Middlesex resolved as follows: of our rights we are called to encounter even death, we are yet undaunted, sensible that he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country." Lexington wrote to Boston, "We trust in God, that, should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and every thing dear in life, and life itself, in support of the common cause.' Quincy wrote from England, “Our countrymen must seal the cause in their blood."

We drew it in at every

The whole atmosphere was charged with war. breath. There was a stillness of deadly preparation, and the patient awaiting of the falling of the bolt. When the news of the seizure of the stores at Charlestown spread, with a report that there had been firing and loss of lives, twenty thousand men were on their march towards Boston, from all parts of New-England, thinking that war had begun. They returned to their homes, when their report was contradicted by authority. The Provincial Congress ordered the citizens to pay their taxes to Mr. Gardner, the agent of the people, and not to the royal collector; and Lexington directed her collectors to obey this order, and the town would secure them harmless. It appointed a day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, a measure of deep significance in those days. The issue was made up. But

it was solemnly resolved that we must not precipitate the war, we must not strike the first blow. We were to endure threats, insults, and demonstrations of violence; but the British troops must fire the first shot. This was not a formal thing with our ancestors. They were close reasoners, could walk straight on a line of duty, and had almost a superstitious respect for the law. They felt the importance of satisfying the friends of our cause in England, and in the other Colonies, some of which were still uncertain, and it was feared that the people of Massachusetts would outrun their sympathy and support. Accordingly, the Continental Congress recommended the people of this Colony to avoid a collision with the king's troops, and in all cases to act only on the defensive. This advice was repeated by the Provincial Congress, echoed by the town-meetings, enforced from the pulpits and the press, and we were committed to it before the world. Men of this day are sometimes amused to see, that, immediately after the battle of Lexington, the colonists took to collecting affidavits to show that the British fired first. But they were better judges than we can now be of what was important at that time.

When the British troops marched out this morning, it was not merely to destroy the military stores collected at Concord, but to disarm and disperse any military organizations not recognized by the new laws, and to arrest and commit to prison the leading patriots. If they had come across a town-meeting or a congress, held without authority of the royal governor's warrant, they would have entered, and dispersed the meeting by the bayonet; and who will doubt, that, like the Roman senators in their curule chairs and stately robes, our ancestors, in their homespun clothes, and on the plain wooden benches of their office, senators of the town and county, would have yielded up their lives where they sat, rather than acknowledge the tyrannical command? It mattered little, and no one could predict at all, whether the first blow would fall on the town-meeting, the congress in its session, or the militia company on the training-field. The troops were to destroy our military stores. If we could collect men enough to defend them, we would form round them, and stand our ground; and, if the troops retired, well: if not, they must fire the first shot. The troops were to disarm and disperse the new militia. If a company was out in martial array for the purpose of defence, they must stand their ground, and retain their arms. If the regulars withdrew, well: if not, the militia must await

the first volley.

Now, what was all this but a call for martyrdom? The first that fell must fall as martyrs. The battle would begin with the shot which took their lives. No call could be made demanding more fortitude, more nerve, than this. Many a man can rush into battle, maddened by the scene, who would find it hard to stand in his line, inactive, to await the volley, if it must come. But our people were thoroughly instructed in their cause. They had studied it, discussed it in the public meeting and through the press, carried it to the Throne of Grace, and tried it by every test they knew. They had made up their minds to the issue, and were prepared to accept its results. When the news came, at night, that the regulars were out, and marching that way, the widow awaked her only son, the young bride summoned her husband, the motherless child her father. "The regulars are out, and something must be done!" Yes, something must be done. That something was to stand on the defensive, and meet death if it came, and then meet war with war. The militia came together on this green in full ranks, with drums beating and colors flying. They acted under the eye

and counsel of Adams and Hancock, and of their own wise, venerated, patriotic pastor. The men separated on the doubt as to the truth of the report, with orders to rally at the drum-beat and the alarm-guns. The first messengers sent down the road had been captured; and the great force was moving steadily on. One scout, more fortunate, escaped, and spread the alarm that the regulars were close at hand. On the beat of the drum, some sixty came together on the green. Affecting and heroic as is the narrative, its details are too well known for me to delay upon them. They were ordered to load, and stand in line. Strictly in accordance with the command of the congress, Capt. Parker ordered them not to fire unless fired upon, and not to disperse but by his command. This, of course, meant war, if the king's troops initiated it. Ours was the people's militia, organized by that body politic into which the people had thrown themselves, and bearing arms in the common defence against the king's troops, by what they deemed their inalienable right, the surrender of which was the surrender of their liberty. The Provincial Congress had not yet established a general system suited to extended military operations. The organization had not got much beyond the town companies of minute-men and the alarm-lists. No one could know, on this sudden call and close-impending crisis, exactly what was best to be done. Each band must act for itself. But had we begun the attack, however successfully, we should have broken every promise, disappointed every wish, counteracted every plan, shocked the public sense, alienated the doubtful; and the cause would have been thrown back, if not defeated. Whatever might have been wisest, if there were time for deliberation, and heads authorized to plan the work for the whole day, one thing these few men felt was bravest, most becoming the Massachusetts freeman, and most in accordance with the policy of the people; and that was, to stand their ground, with loaded arms in their hands, as a lawful militia, on their lawful training-field, prepared for whatever might befall them; ready, if need be, as Lexington had promised Boston, "to sacrifice life itself in the common cause;" feeling, in the words of the Middlesex Resolves, that "he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country."

Here let me call your attention aside for one moment. The people of Massachusetts have received no little commendation, in some quarters, from the notion that they were simple, peaceful yeomen and mechanics, unused to war and its works, facing for the first time regular troops of a warlike nation. That praise is not our due, to the extent supposed. True, they had not seen war on their own soil since the last Indian fights, and the younger of the minute-men had not served in actual war at all. But, from the foundation of the Colony to the last European peace, the colonists had had constant experience in savage and civilized warfare. The Puritans had no scruples about the use of arms. Their pastors sometimes went with them to the field; and the militia, when in array, had their place in the public worship. During the great French war, every fifth man of Massachusetts had been in the service; and a larger proportion of our ablebodied men had been mustered into service during the seven years of that war, than Napoleon had led into the field from the French people at the height of his power; in fact, the people of Massachusetts had been, up to that time, one of the most martial people on earth. The historian Minot tells us, that, in 1757, one-third of the effective men of this Colony were in the field, in some form or other. In the expedition to the West Indies in 1740, Massachusetts sent five hundred men, of whom only fifty re