LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 37 



sense, and the dialectic skill of Samuel Adams show 

 to better advantage than in the reply which he drew 

 up for the legislature. Its force was such as to make 

 the governor doubt whether he had done wisely, after 

 all, in opening an argument on the subject. He sent 

 in an elaborate rejoinder, to which Adams again 

 replied, and for some time the controversy was sus- 

 tained with dignity on both sides. Whatever opinions 

 were held as to the merits of the arguments, the gov- 

 ernor certainly gained in personal popularity during 

 the winter, and still more in the spring, when he met 

 the governor of New York at Hartford, and succeeded 

 in adjusting the long-disputed boundary line between 

 New York and Massachusetts, to the entire satisfac- 

 tion of the latter colony. 



This was the last moment of popular favour that 

 Hutchinson was ever to know. The skein of events 

 that were to compass his downfall had already unwound 

 itself in London. For several years a private and 

 unofficial correspondence had been kept up between 

 Hutchinson and other officers of the crown in Massa- 

 chusetts, on the one hand, and Thomas Whately, who 

 had formerly been private secretary to George Grenville, 

 on the other. Whately was a friend to America, and 

 disapproved of the king's policy. Besides Hutchinson, 

 the chief writers were his brother-in-law, Andrew 

 Oliver, who was now associated with him as lieutenant- 

 governor, and Charles Paxton, one of the revenue 

 officers in Boston. In these letters Hutchinson freely 

 commented on the policy of Samuel Adams and other 

 popular leaders as seditious in tendency ; he doubted 

 if it were practicable for a colony removed by three 

 thousand miles of ocean to enjoy all the liberties of 



