178 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



century that William the Third formed the standing Council of the Lords 

 Commissioners tor Trade and Plantations, vested with new and central- 

 izing powers of superintendence. There had been in the more arbi- 

 trary reign of James the Second indications of the same policy of more 

 active colonial control; and it made itself manifest in the new methods 

 of colonial administration, their policy and their phms, in one instance 

 nothing less than a recommendation that "all the Ens-lish colonies of 

 North America be reduced (reduced, such was the word) under one 

 government and one viceroy." The consequence of all this was, that 

 union began to present itself to the thoughts of the colonists in the ob- 

 noxious light of a means of increasing the ascendancy of the royal pre- 

 rogative; and they watched with perpetual vigilance every approach to 

 combined action, to union avovvt^dly or covertly compulsory, as some- 

 thing that was fatal to colonial rights. 



The ancient Saxon element of distributed power was quickened into 

 renewed activity during a long period of apprehension. When, in con- 

 sequence of the suggestion of the Board of Trade and of the colonial 

 secretary, the Albany convention was held in 1754, WMth its delegations 

 from seven colonies, extending as far south as Maryland, the plan of 

 union proposed by that Congress was, as is well known, rejected ; 

 although the wav with France was imminent, and although the author 

 of the plan was Franklin himself, a delegate from Pennsylvania. The 

 several colonial assemblies detected too much of prerogative in tiie 

 scheme of union, which had the singular fate of proving also unsatisfac- 

 tory in England, because of the opposite objection of too little pre- 

 rogative. Franklin was discr>uraged in his hopes of colonial confedera- 

 tion; and one of his correspondents said to him, writing from Boston, 

 in 1754 : " However necessary a union may be for tiie mutual safety 

 and preservation of these colonies, it is certain it will never take [)lace 

 unless we are forced to it by the supreme authority of the nation." 



It was by the action of the supreme power of the nation that union 

 did take place, but not in the way contemplated when those words 

 were used. When the new and obnoxious colonial policy took the 

 well defined shape of the Stump Act, union, which had been dreaded 

 when the proposal came in any Ibrm from the British government, was 

 instinctively resorted 1o as a means of defence and security, and the 

 delegations of nine colonies, as far south as South Carolina, met in the 

 Congress of 1765. 



When, nine years later, the power of the British government struck, 

 with the Boston Port Bill, at one single point, the sentiment of union 

 was discovered to be strong enough and quick enough to make com- 

 mon cause with almost instantaneous rapidity, and twelve colonies 

 (soon alterwards to reach the full complement ot" the old thirteen) assem- 

 bled by their delegations in the Congress of 1774. When it is con- 

 sidered that those delegations were chosen in various ways, with 

 much of irregularity, of necessity, I know of nothing so remarkable in 

 the history of representation as the meeting of those fifty-two men in a 

 room of a building farpiliar to Philadelphians as the Carpenteis' Hall, 

 locking the doors, enjojning secresy on the members, and all the 

 while the people from j\ew Hampshire lo Georgia waiting quietly, 

 willingly, resolutely, prepared to do, I will not say the blldvng of that 



