is said
would have saved the property thus destroyed; but he would have been
justly censured if he had granted it. He was bound, as all the Governors
were, by oath, faithfully to observe the Acts of Trade, and to do his
endeavour that the statute of King William, which established a
Custom-house, and is particularly mentioned in the Act, be carried into
execution."

In Governor Hutchinson's own statement and vindication of his conduct,
he admits that the meetings of the people were lawfully called and
regularly conducted; that they were attended by the higher as well as
lower classes of the people; that they exhausted every means in their
power, deliberately and during successive days, to have the tea returned
to England without damage, as was done from the ports of New York and
Philadelphia; and that by his own acts, different from those of New
York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, whose Governors were subject to
the same oaths as himself, the opposers of taxation by the British
Parliament were reduced to the alternative of defeat, or of throwing the
tea in question into the sea, as the Governor had effectually blocked up
every possible way to their having the tea returned to England. Governor
Hutchinson does not pretend to the technical scrupulousness of his oath,
applicable to ordinary cases, binding him to write to the Admiral to
guard the tea by an increased number of armed vessels in the channel of
the harbour, and to prevent any vessel from passing out of the harbour
for sea, without his own permit; nor does he intimate that he himself
was the principal partner in the firm, nominally in the name of his
sons, to whom the East India Company had principally consigned as agents
the sale of the tea in question; much less does he say that in his
letters to England, which had been mysteriously obtained by Dr.
Franklin, and of the publication of which he so strongly and justly
complained, he had urged the virtual deprivation of his country of its
constitution of free government by having the Executive Councillors
appointed and the salaries of the governor, judges, secretary, and
attorney and solicitor-generals paid by the Crown out of the taxes of
the people of the colony, imposed by the Imperial Parliament. Governor
Hutchinson had rendered great service to his country by his History, and
as a public representative, for many years in its Legislature and
Councils, and was long regarded as its chief leader; but he had a