50 THOMAS HUTCHINSON 



ways of thinking; and herein was one source of his 

 weakness as a statesman. But the chief source of that 

 weakness, as is so often the case, was closely related to 

 one of his most remarkable features of strength. That 

 inborn legal quality of his mind which, without the 

 customary technical training, made him a jurist capa-. 

 ble of winning the admiration of Lord Mansfield, was 

 too strongly developed. Allied with his rigid Puritan 

 conscience, it outweighed other good qualities and 

 warped his nature. He was enveloped in a crust of 

 intense legality, through which he could not break. 

 If he had lived a century later, he might have written 

 the memorable pamphlet in which another great Mas- 

 sachusetts jurist, Benjamin Curtis, argued that Presi- 

 dent Lincoln had no constitutional authority for 

 emancipating the slaves. It is always well that such 

 strides in advance should be made under careful pro- 

 test, for only thus is society kept secure against crude 

 experiments. But the men best fitted to utter the pro- 

 test are not likely to be competent leaders in revolu- 

 tionary times, when it becomes necessary to view many 

 facts in a new light. For this is required the rare tact 

 of a Samuel Adams or a Lincoln. It was Hutchin- 

 son's misfortune that, with such a rigidly legal tem- 

 perament, he should have been called to fill a supreme 

 executive office at the moment of a great revolutionary 

 crisis. Nothing but failure and obloquy could come 

 from such a situation. Yet the pages of history are 

 strewn with examples of brave men slain in defence of 

 unworthy causes, and because they have been true to 

 their convictions we honour and respect them. Never 

 did Hutchinson flinch a hair's-breadth for the sake of 

 personal advancement. Would that there were more 



