LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 19 



ful men in the fear that, if the protecting hand of Great 

 Britain were once removed, the colonies would either 

 fall a prey to France or Spain, or else would tear 

 themselves to pieces with internecine wars ; and who 

 is there that can read the solemn story of the impend- 

 ing anarchy from which Washington and Madison 

 and Hamilton saved the people of these states in the 

 anxious years that followed the victory at Yorktown, 

 and then say that such forebodings were wholly un- 

 reasonable. It is easy to be wise after the event ; but 

 in distributing the meed of praise and blame, the his- 

 torian must bear in mind the aspect of things in the 

 times which he seeks to describe, when events, now as 

 familiar as our daily bread, were as yet in the darkness 

 of the future, undreamed of and improbable. Noth- 

 ing can be clearer to-day than that Hutchinson's fun- 

 damental theory was wrong. He failed to take in the 

 situation, and paid so heavy a penalty for his failure 

 that we can well afford to give him due credit for the 

 wisdom and good feeling which in some respects he 

 did show to an eminent degree. Like Dickinson and 

 Burke, he realized that the question of the ultimate 

 supremacy of Parliament was a dangerous one to 

 insist upon. He saw distinctly the foolishness of 

 enlisting such a wholesome feeling as the love of 

 self-government in behalf of such a wretched concern 

 as the Massachusetts Land Bank ; and he earnestly 

 advised Governor Belcher to bide his time, and trust 

 in accomplishing its downfall in some other way than 

 by a direct appeal to Parliament. Surely Belcher, as 

 an ambitious politician, undervalued the counsel of 

 this young man of nine and twenty, for the immedi- 

 ate result of his violent conduct was his own downfall ; 



