LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 49 



their way across the ocean, and they throw much light 

 upon the history of the whole situation. The writer's 

 intense love for New England is mournfully conspicu- 

 ous from first to last. Until Burgoyne's surrender he 

 cherished the hope of returning thither, but after that 

 event he resigned himself to the probability that he 

 must die in exile. The deaths of two of his five chil- 

 dren took from his fast-diminishing strength. On the 

 3d of June, 1780, as he was getting into his carriage 

 at Brompton, there came a stroke of apoplexy, and he 

 fell back into the arms of his servant. His funeral 

 procession passed by the smouldering wrecks of houses 

 just burned in those hideous Gordon riots that Dickens 

 has immortalized in " Barnaby Rudge." 



For intellectual gifts and accomplishments, Hutch- 

 inson stands far above all the other colonial governors 

 and in the foremost rank among American public men 

 of whatever age. For thorough grasp of finance, he 

 was the peer of Hamilton and Gallatin. In 1809 J nn 

 Adams, who loved him not, said " he understood the 

 subject of coin and commerce better than any man I 

 ever knew in this country." His mastery of law was 

 equally remarkable, and as a historian his accuracy is 

 of the highest order. His personal magnetism was so 

 great that in spite of all vicissitudes of popular feeling, 

 so long as he remained upon the scene, and until after 

 his departure for England had been followed by the 

 outbreak of war, he did not fully lose his hold upon the 

 people. He was nothing if not public-spirited, and his 

 kindness toward persons in distress and sorrow knew 

 no bounds. Yet in intellectual sympathy with plain 

 common people he seems to have been deficient. He 

 was too thoroughly an aristocrat to enter into their 



