LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 41 



as he could not have foreseen when he accepted the 

 governorship. It was mainly his stubborn courage 

 that kept the consignees of the tea from resigning 

 their commissions in Boston, as the consignees in 

 New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston had done. 

 This made Boston the battle-ground upon which the 

 tea question was to end in a flat defiance of the British 

 government. Hutchinson tried to avoid the difficulty 

 by advising the consignees to order the vessels on 

 their arrival to anchor below the Castle, so that if it 

 should seem best not to land the tea they might go to 

 sea again. When the first ship arrived, she was 

 anchored accordingly, but it happened that she had 

 other goods on board which some merchants in town 

 were needing, and a committee, headed by Samuel 

 Adams, ordered the captain to bring his ship to dock, 

 in order to land these goods. This brought the vessel 

 within the jurisdiction of the custom-house, and when 

 the officers refused to give her a clearance until she 

 had landed the tea also, there was no way of getting 

 her out to sea without a pass from the governor. But 

 JHutchinson felt that granting a pass for a ship until 

 she had been duly cleared at the custom-house would 

 be a violation of his oath of office. The situation was 

 thus a complete deadlock, and for the popular party 

 there was no way out except in the destruction of the 

 tea. 



The antagonism between governor and people, which 

 thus culminated in the first great crisis of the American 

 Revolution, had been immeasurably enhanced by the 

 adroit use which had been made of the Whately letters. 

 One cannot, in this particular, view the conduct of 

 Samuel Adams and his friends with entire approval. 



