64 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
contending for an idea which was at least as worthy as that for which 
Washington fought. The maintenance of one free, industrial, and 
pacific empire, comprising the whole English-speaking race, may have 
been a dream, but it was at least a noble one.” 
One of the most conspicuous of these Loyalists was Thomas Hutch- 
inson, a last royal governor of the province of Massachusetts Bay. 
One of Hutchinson’s successors in the governorship of Massachusetts, 
speaking of him as chief justice, said: “Few who sat upon the Bench 
in the last century were more deserving of commendation. His char- 
acter in this capacity was irreproachable, his learning, even in the 
science of law, was highly respectable, and when we consider his early 
education, was indeed remarkable.” “ His historical writings,” says 
his biographer, “ give him a respectable place in the literature of his 
age.” For a quarter of a century, from before the fal] of Louisbourg to 
his exile from America, “there was,” he adds, “no more eminent person- 
age in the western hemisphere than he.” 
Of his ability as a financier, John Adams, his vehement antagonist 
during his life, thirty years after his death wrote: “If I was the witch 
of Endor, I would wake the ghost of Hutchinson, and give him absolute 
power over the currency of the United States and every part of it, pro- 
vided always that he should meddle with nothing but the currency. As 
little as I revere his memory, I will acknowledge that he understood the 
subject of coin and commerce better than any man I ever knew in this 
country.” 
The materials for the life of Hutchinson are ample. He prepared 
while in exile in England in his old age, an autobiography from his 
youth to the Revolution, published in two volumes. The third volume 
of his History of Massachusetts Bay, not printed till nearly fifty years 
after his death, gives also much personal information. The Hutchin- 
son Correspondence, comprising fifteen hundred letters in three thick 
folio volumes, preserved in the Massachusetts archives, presents a vivid 
picture of the stormy period through which he lived. This manuscript 
was left behind him on his exile from the country in 1774, and many 
pages are still stained with mud and rain from exposure in the street, 
to which they were flung by the mob when his house was pillaged in 
1765. There are copious references to the Hutchinson papers in the 
collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society and in Justin Win- 
sor’s Narrative and Critical History of America. The best compendious 
Life of the sturdy Loyalist is that by James K. Hosmer, an octavo 
volume of 481 pages with reprints of many illustrative documents.* 
To this we are largely indebted for the material for this brief memoir. 


1 Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
