re or to override that discontent. The
King was fortunate, or believed himself to be fortunate, in finding
among his ministers the aptest instrument he could desire for striking
at the Americans. Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, was one
of those men who appear to be inspired by a very genius of perversity.
He had a power of misunderstanding a political situation and
underestimating a political crisis which, if it could only have been
reversed, would have earned him a foremost place among the statesmen of
his time. But his perversity was of like temper with the perversity of
the King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably qualified to interpret
the King's dislike of his American subjects and to make himself the
mouthpiece of the anti-Colonial feeling which had been steadily growing
up in the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of the Stamp
Act had known its season of brief popularity.

The comparative temperance and lucidity of the Rockingham period seemed
now indeed remote and memorable. Exasperation and not conciliation
appeared to be the persistent note of England's colonial policy. It
was England's misfortune to be peculiarly ill served on both sides of
the Atlantic by those who were intrusted with the conduct of colonial
affairs. It would be hard to say whether the provincial governors
abroad or the ministers at home were least capable of understanding the
people with whom they {148} had to deal, or were most to blame for
their actions in the face of a danger that their own folly had brought
about. With a man like Lord Hillsborough for Secretary of State in
London, with a man like Bernard for Governor of Massachusetts in
Boston, it is not to be wondered at now, and it ought not to have been
wondered at then, that the colonies refused to crystallize into
tranquillity. Francis Bernard was a man of certain ability, certain
gifts, and uncertain good intentions. But he was, as we have seen, a
perfervid Tory, a zealous champion of the royal prerogative, a profound
believer in the wisdom of minimizing, if not abrogating, the privileges
of which the colonists, and especially the colonists of Massachusetts,
were so proud. It was Bernard's peculiar fortune to be not merely the
supporter but the adviser of the English Ministries in almost all the
series of disastrous actions towards their colonies. Bernard was
inspired by a kind of furious folly in his words and deeds. Unhappily,
this kind of fu