LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 43 



because in my private letters I have discovered the 

 same sentiments, for everything else asserted to be 

 contained in those letters (I mean of mine) unfriendly 

 to the country, I must deny as altogether groundless 

 and false." By this last qualification the governor 

 shows himself aware of the cruel injustice wrought in 

 holding him responsible for everything that Paxton 

 and Oliver had said. The letters, when published to- 

 gether in a single pamphlet, were read as containing 

 from first to last the sentiments of Hutchinson. In 

 the popular excitement the fact that they were not all 

 his letters was lost sight of; and by a wild leap of 

 inference not uncommon in such cases, people soon 

 reached the conclusion that the conduct of the British 

 government for the past ten years had been secretly 

 instigated by him ; that he was to blame for the Stamp 

 Act, the sending of troops to Boston, the tea measures, 

 and everything. It was this misunderstanding that 

 heaped upon Hutchinson's name the load of oppro- 

 brium which it has had to carry for a hundred years. 

 His mistaken political attitude would not of itself have 

 sufficed to call forth such intense bitterness of feeling. 

 The erroneousness of his policy is even clearer to us 

 than to his contemporaries, for with the lapse of time 

 it has been more and more completely refuted by the 

 unanswerable logic of events. But we can also see 

 how grievously he was misjudged, since we know that 

 he was not the underhanded schemer that men sup- 

 posed him to be. Never has there been a more 

 memorable illustration of the wrong and suffering that 

 is apt to be wrought in all directions in a period of 

 revolutionary excitement than the fact that during the 

 autumn of 1773 one of the purest and most high- 



