JEFFERSON.
Jefferson would have been a notable man in any country and any age, because he possessed both genius and character. Without the former he could never have succeeded, as he did, in moulding the opinions of his contemporaries and successors, and without the latter, he would not have been, as he was, bitterly hated by his enemies and cordially loved by his friends. His genius, however, was not of that kind which in the ardor of its inspiration intoxicates the judgment; nor was his character, on the other hand, of the sort which moves an admiration so profound, unquestioning and universal, as to disarm the antagonism its very excellence provokes. There was enough error and frailty, therefore, mingled with his eminent qualities both of mind and heart, to involve him in seeming contradictions, and to expose his life to double construction and controversy. At the same time, it has happened to him as it has often happened in human history, that the hostility awakened by his acts during his life, has dwindled with the lapse of time, while his fame has grown brighter and broader with every renewal of the decisions of posterity. No man, we may now safely say, who has figured on the theatre of events in this country, with the single exception of Washington, occupies a larger share of the veneration of Americans.
He was born at Shadwell, in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1743. His father, dying when he was twelve years of age, left him a large inheritance. He was educated at the College of William and Mary, studied law under the celebrated George Wythe, began the practice of it in 1767, and in 1769 was chosen a member of the provincial legislature, where his first movement--an unsuccessful one--was for the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves. But a greater question soon engrossed his mind. Already a spirit of opposition had been excited in the colonies to the arbitrary measures of the parliament of Great Britain,--that very legislature was dissolved by the Governor, in consequence of the sympathy displayed by its leading members with the patriotic proceedings of Ma.s.sachusetts,--it appealed to the const.i.tuency, and was triumphantly returned,--and then in 1773, its more active spirits organized, in a room of a tavern at Raleigh, a system of correspondence, designed to inflame the zeal and unite the efforts of the colonists against the encroachments of power. As a result of this activity, a convention was called in Virginia for the purpose of choosing delegates to a more general Congress. Jefferson was a member of it, but not being able, on account of ill-health, to attend, drew up a paper on the Rights of British America, which the convention did not adopt, but which it published; "the leap he proposed," as he says, "being too long for the ma.s.s of the citizens,"--and which Edmund Burke in England caused to run through several editions. The pamphlet procured him reputation, and the more honorable distinction of having his name placed in a bill of attainder, moved in one of the houses of Parliament.
Thus early was he identified with the champions of liberty in the new world.
In 1775, Jefferson took his seat for the first time in the Continental Congress, whither he carried the same decided and liberal tone which had marked his legislative efforts. He was soon appointed on the most important committees, and especially on that, which, on the motion of the delegates of Virginia, was raised to prepare a Declaration of Independence for the colonies. It was a measure carried only after a strenuous and hot debate, but it was finally carried by a large majority; and to Jefferson was a.s.signed the task, by his a.s.sociates, of preparing the doc.u.ment destined to inaugurate a new era in the history of mankind. How he executed the duty the world knows; for this paper became the charter of freedom to a whole continent; and annually to this day, millions of people read it with grat.i.tude, reverence, joy, and praise to G.o.d. For a second time, then, we behold our Jefferson, a chosen champion of liberty, linking his name, not with a bill of attainder this time; but with the most signal event in the destiny of his country,--and one, second to none in the political fortunes of humanity.
The Declaration proclaimed, Mr. Jefferson retired from his place in the Congress to resume his seat in the legislature of his native State; where, an imperfect Const.i.tution having been adopted, during his absence, he was immediately involved in the most indefatigable labors for its reform. In connection with Wythe, Mason, Pendleton, and Lee, he prepared no less than 136 different acts, from which were derived all the most liberal features of the existing laws of the Commonwealth. They laid the foundation, in fact, of the code of Virginia,--as a mere monument of industry, they were a most extraordinary work, but when we consider the importance of some of the principles of legislation which they introduced, sufficient in themselves to have immortalized the name of any man. Among these principles, were provisions for the abrogation of the laws of entail and primogeniture, for the establishment of religious freedom, for a complete amelioration of the criminal code, including the abolition of capital punishments in all cases, except of treason and murder, for the emanc.i.p.ation, at a certain age, of all slaves born after the pa.s.sage of the act, for the division of the counties into wards and towns, and the establishment thereby of free munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, and for the introduction of a system of popular education, providing for schools in each town, academies in each county, and a University for the State. The three first were carried into effect; but the others, in consequence of his personal absence on other duties, failed. But what a different destiny would have been that of Virginia if they had not failed! How intrepid, too, the mind which could conceive and urge such measures at that time! Society in Virginia was then divided into three cla.s.ses, the land and slave-owners, the yeomanry, and the laboring people. Jefferson was by birth and position of the first cla.s.s, but his chief a.s.sociations had been among the second cla.s.s, while his sympathies were with the third cla.s.s, or rather with all cla.s.ses. Had his suggestions been adopted, these distinctions would have been destroyed, and Virginia raised to the first place among the free nations of the earth. Thus, for a third time, we find Jefferson among the foremost advocates of the liberty and advancement of the people.
In 1779 he was chosen the successor of Patrick Henry, as the Governor of the State; but war having been declared, and a military invasion being at hand, he resigned the position on account of his want of military talents, in favor of General Nelson. He had barely time to escape with his family before the enemy entered his house. Congress twice solicited him to go abroad, first to negotiate a peace, and then a treaty of alliance and commerce with France, but as "the laboring oar," in his own language, "was at home," it was not until the year 1782, when the a.s.surance that a general peace would be concluded, became stronger, that he consented to quit his country. The preliminary articles of a peace, however, were received before the time of his departure, and the objects of his mission being thus accomplished, he was again chosen to Congress in 1783.
The great question then, was the formation of a better government for the colonies, than the weak and ill-jointed confederation of the time had afforded. Jefferson was prepared to enter into its discussion with ardor, bringing to the task that keen sagacity and that stern republican spirit, which were among his chief characteristics, when he was joined to Adams and Franklin in a commission for negotiating treaties of commerce with foreign nations. He arrived in Paris in June of 1785. His practical insight into affairs, his vast information, and his determined will, made him a valuable acquisition even to the distinguished abilities of his colleagues. His labors were incessant, and yet he found time to partic.i.p.ate, as far as his diplomatic functions allowed, in the stirring and brilliant scenes then going forward on the theatre of Europe. The part that he had performed in the great battles for liberty in America, attracted towards him the regards and the confidence of all the prominent actors of the revolutionary drama of France. It was at his house that the patriots most frequently met; it was in his house that the Declaration of Rights which preceded the first French Const.i.tution was drafted; it was at his house that the First Const.i.tution was proposed; it was from him that Lafayette received many of his best and n.o.blest impulses, and to him that the earlier leaders of the struggle looked for sympathy, concurrence, and direction. In after years, in the bitter political contests of the day, it was a topic of reproach that he was under French influence, but the truth was, as some one has sagaciously remarked, that the French had been brought under an American influence. He simply continued to be abroad what he had always been at home, the pioneer and consistent friend of popular rights,--the unflinching supporter of popular liberty.
It was during this interval of absence in Europe, that the controversy in respect to a better const.i.tution of government for the colonies, to which we have just alluded, was brought to a head. There had always been a substantial union between them, founded upon contiguous geographical position and their common interests, as well as their community of origin, languages, laws and religion, which the common danger of the Revolution had served to strengthen and cement. But as yet their political union was inchoate and fragile. It was a simple improvement upon the cla.s.sical confederacies of history, such as had prevailed in ancient Greece, on the plains of Etrusca, before Rome was, among the dikes of Holland, or along the declivities of the Swiss Alps,--and such as Montesquieu and the accepted writers praised as the perfection of political arrangement, clear of all defects, and secure from foreign violence and domestic weakness. Yet, in the practice of the New World, it had not justified the praises of the theorists, for a fatal vice, an alarming and radical weakness had been developed in its want of due centripetal force. In other words, it was rather a conglomerate than a united whole, and the difficulty of the new problem which it raised consisted in the proper adjustment of the federal and central with the State and local authority. Parties were, of course, immediately formed on the question of the true solution of it, the one favoring a strong central power, taking the name of Federalist; and the other, disposed to adhere to the separate sovereignty and independence of the States, taking the name of Anti-Federalist. In the end, the Const.i.tution actually adopted, a work only second in importance to the Revolution itself, or more properly the constructive completion of it, was a compromise between the two, although the original parties still maintained their relative positions, as the friends and foes of a preponderating general government.
Jefferson inclined to the anti-federalists, but not being in the midst of the debate, was scarcely mingled with its more exciting quarrels. It is hard to say, what shape, or whether a different shape at all, would have been given to the instrument of union, had he been at home to take part in its formation. We think it probable, however, that his immense personal influence, combined with his sharp forecast and decentralizing tendency, would have succeeded in modifying its more aristocratic and conservative features, especially in regard to the absorbing power of the Executive and the irresponsible tenure of the Judiciary. Be that as it may, the choice of him by Washington, in 1789, for the post of the first Secretary of State, gave him an opportunity of exercising his talents and manifesting his disposition, in the organization of the new experiment.
There were two antagonisms which he found it necessary at the outset to meet; first, the tendency to federal absorption, and second, the reliance upon law rather than liberty, both embodied in the person of Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of genius, of energy, of sincere convictions, and the confidant of Washington. The two men were, therefore, speedily self-placed in strong opposition. Hamilton had been educated in a military school, he admired the British Const.i.tution, and, though he was an earnest patriot, as his efficient services in the war, and his masterly vindications of the Const.i.tution had proved, he cherished a secret distrust of the people. Jefferson, on the other hand, had sympathized all his life with the mult.i.tude, approved, or rather had antic.i.p.ated, the French philosophy, which was then in vogue, disliked the English models of government, and was sanguine of the future. It was inevitable, consequently, that the opposition of such men, both able, both decided, both earnest in their plans, should widen into an almost irreconcilable hostility. In 1793, Jefferson resigned, but not until, by his reports to Congress on the currency, the fisheries, weights and measures, and by his correspondence with foreign ministers, he had placed his department on a level with the Foreign Offices of the older nations. It is to him that we are indebted for our decimal coinage, and through him, as Mr. Webster, a competent and not too friendly judge, has confessed, our diplomatic intercourse was raised to a dignity and strength which will bear comparison with any that other governments can produce.
In 1797 Jefferson was called from his retirement to act as Vice-President of the United States,--a place of not much practical efficiency, but which he ill.u.s.trated by compiling a manual of Parliamentary Practice, which has ever since been the standard by which the proceedings of legislative bodies in this country are regulated.
There was no position, indeed, which he does not appear to have been able to turn to some advantage to his country and his fellow-men.
At the close of his term as Vice-President, he was chosen President,--a choice in which a final blow was given to the doctrines of Federalism, and the democratic republic finally inaugurated. We shall not, however, enter into the contests of that period, nor attempt to detail the measures of his administration. They are subjects for history, not for an outline like this we sketch. Suffice it to say, that the aspirations of the people were not disappointed by the results of his action. He rescued the functions of government from the improper direction which had been given to them, he organized strength through simplicity, he almost doubled the territory of the Union, he caused the vast regions of the west, now the seat of populous empire, to be explored, he gave us character abroad, and maintained tranquillity at home,--and, last of all, against the solicitation of his friends, with a popular prestige that would have carried him in triumph through a third or fourth term of office, even to the close of his days, he consecrated for ever the example of Washington, by resigning, as that great man had done, at the end of eight years.
These are the simple facts of Jefferson"s active career, and they need no comment. They present a character obviously too transparent to allow of much mistake. All his life points to a few simple but great objects.
By his sanguine temperament, his keen insight, his quick and cherishing sympathies, his strong love of justice, his kindly visions of the future, he was made a democrat; and, under no circ.u.mstances could he have been any thing else. He hated tyranny, he loved truth, and he was not afraid of man; how then could he avoid becoming what he was, the apostle of freedom, author of the Statutes of Virginia and the Declaration of Independence, founder of the republican party, a name of power to future generations which have scarcely yet come up to the greatness and breadth of his enlightened opinions? Errors of conduct he may have committed, for who is perfect? impracticable views he may have enunciated, for who is all-wise? but the glory of his achievements is an imperishable remembrance of his countrymen, ill.u.s.trating their history to all nations and to all times. "A superior and commanding intellect,"
it has been eloquently said, "is not a temporary flame burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common ma.s.s of human mind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit."
The retirement of Mr. Jefferson at Monticello was pa.s.sed in the cultivation of his estate, in the pursuit of letters, in cheerful intercourse with friends, in the duties of a liberal hospitality, and in advancing his favorite project of a University of Virginia. His notes on Virginia, and his contributions to scientific periodicals, together with his extensive correspondence, had brought him to the acquaintance of the most distinguished scientific men of the world, and his eminent political services had made him known to statesmen. His house was, therefore, always thronged with visitors, who, attracted by his fame, were charmed by his conversation, astonished by his learning, and warmed into love by the unaffected kindliness of his deportment. A beautiful retirement, full of grandeur, of simplicity, of dignity and repose! A patriarch of the nation which he had helped to found, and which he lived to see in a condition of unparalleled advancement,--ill.u.s.trious in two hemispheres,--his name connected with events that introduced a new era in the history of his race,--surrounded by the grateful admiration of growing millions of people; his old age was pa.s.sed in the serenest contentment, amid the blandishments of literature and science, the interchanges of friendly offices, and in useful labor in the library or on the farm.
Monticello, which is the name which Mr. Jefferson had given to his home, was built in one of the most enchanting regions of Virginia. "It seemed designed by nature," says a writer, "as the very seat from which, lifted above the world"s turmoil, one who has exhausted what it can bestow of eminence, might look down, withdrawn from its personal troubles, but contemplating at leisure the distant animation of the scene. It was a place scarcely less fit for the visionary abode of the philosophic speculatist, than by its far-spread and shifting beauties of landscapes to inspire a poet with perpetual delight." On a spire of the romantic Blue Ridge, whose varying outlines stretch away from it till they are lost to the sight, with a sylvan scene of unsurpa.s.sed loveliness in the vale below, the quiet Rivanna meandering through rich fields on one side, the pleasant village of Charlotteville dotting the other, while the porticoes and domes of the University rise in the distance behind, it overlooked a combination of natural pictures that are rarely found in one spot.
"The country," says the visitor we have just quoted, "is not flat, but a gently waving one; yet, from above and afar, its inequalities of surface vanish into a map-like smoothness, and are traceable only in the light and shade cast by hill and plain. The prospect here has a diameter of near a hundred miles: its scope is therefore such that atmospheric effects are constantly flickering over it, even in the most cloudless days of a climate as bright if not quite so soft as that of Italy; and thus each varying aspect of the weather is reflected, all the while, from the features of the landscape, as the pa.s.sions are over the face of some capricious beauty, that laughs, and frowns, and weeps almost in the same breath. Near you, perhaps, all is smiling in the sunlight; yonder broods or bursts a storm; while, in a third quarter, darkness and light contend upon the prospect, and chase each other. The sky itself is thus not more shifting than the scene you may have before you. It takes a new aspect at almost every moment, and bewitches you with a perpetual novelty."
The mansion of the philosopher was placed on the top of an eminence commanding this beautiful scene. It was somewhat fantastic in its architecture, owing to the additions and rebuildings that had been constantly going on, to adapt it to the enlarged wants and changing tastes of the occupant, but it was s.p.a.cious, richly furnished and commodious. The rarest treasures of literature adorned the library, and indeed every part bore witness to the affluence and cultivated pursuits of the venerable sage. A farm of some fourteen thousand acres lay about among the hills, which was laboriously and carefully husbanded, and which gave employment in various ways to a number of artificers and mechanics, whose dwellings were distributed about the slopes. His estate, in short, was a small and almost independent community in itself, capable of supplying the ordinary needs and even the luxuries of a highly civilized condition of social existence. As a proof of this, we may state by the way, that the carriage of the proprietor, as well as many of the tools and implements in daily use, had been manufactured on the premises. But the wonder of the place was the library, which was not only extensive, but extensively rich in its rare possessions, which the master had seduously collected during his long residence abroad from every nook and corner of Europe. Unfortunately many of these books, afterwards presented to Congress, were burned in the conflagration of the Capitol. Of the man himself, a guest, who was any thing but an admirer, has left this record.
"Dressed, within doors, as I saw him last, no longer in the red breeches, which were once famous as his favorite and rather conspicuous attire; but still vindicating by a sanguine waistcoat his attachment to that Republican color; in gray shorts, small silver kneebuckles, gray woollen stockings, black slippers, a blue body-coat, surmounted by a gray spencer; tall, and though lithe of person and decidedly graceful and agile of motion and carriage, yet long and ill-limbed, Mr.
Jefferson"s figure was commanding and striking, though bad, and his face most animated and agreeable, although remarkably ugly. His legs, by no means shunned observation; yet they were scarcely larger at the knee than in the ankle, and had never been conscious of a calf. Still, though without strength, they had always borne him along with vigor and suppleness. These bodily qualities and a health almost unfailing, he preserved, in a singular degree, to the very close of his long life. At the time I speak of, when he was in his eighty-first year, he not only mounted his horse without a.s.sistance and rode habitually some ten miles a day, but, dismounting at a fence breast-high, would leap over it, by only placing his hand on the topmost rail. He walked not only well and swiftly, but with a lightness and springiness of tread, such as few young men even have. It was a restless activity of mind, which informed all this unusual mobility of body; and the two, I think, were, in him, greatly alike. For his intellect had, like his person, more size than shape, more adroitness than force, more suppleness than solidity, and affected its ends by continuity of action not ma.s.s of power, by manipulation not muscularity. You may batter to pieces with a small hammer that which a cannon-ball would not shiver. He was never idle: nay, hardly a moment still. He rose early and was up late, through his life; and was all day, whenever not on foot or a-horse-back, at study, at work, or in conversation. If his legs and fingers were at rest, his tongue would sure to be a-going. Indeed, even when seated in his library in a low Spanish chair, he held forth to his visitors in an almost endless flow of fine discourse, his body seemed as impatient of keeping still as his mind, it shifted its position incessantly, and so twisted itself about that you might almost have thought he was att.i.tudinizing.
Meantime, his face, expressive as it was ugly, was not much less busy than his limbs, in bearing its part in the conversation, and kept up, all the while, the most speaking by-play, an eloquence of the countenance as great as ugly features could well have. It stood to his conversation like the artful help of well-imagined ill.u.s.trations to the text of a book: a graphic commentary on every word, that was as convincing to the eyes as was his discourse to the ears. The impression which it conveyed was a strong auxiliary of all he uttered: for it begat in you an almost unavoidable persuasion of his sincerity."
Jefferson"s conversation is described as the most agreeable and brilliant of his day; but was it this which gave him his personal power?
He was not in other respects a man of any pre-eminent personal qualities; he did not possess commanding military skill; he was no orator, having seldom spoken in public; and though a good writer, he was not particularly distinguished in that line. His conversation, therefore, may have helped him in acquiring a mastery of the minds of men; but the real secret of his success consisted in two things--in his general superiority of intellect, and in his rich, generous, n.o.ble intuitions. He saw the truths and spoke the words, which the world wanted to see and hear, at the right time--a little in advance of his generation, but not too much in advance so as to "dwarf himself by the distance." His sympathetic genius beat responsive to the genius of his age. His instincts were the instincts of the men of his day; more decided and p.r.o.nounced than theirs, but still recognized as a prophecy of what they felt the deepest and wanted the most. All the talent, all the cunning, all the selfish calculation of the world could not have enabled him to reach the heights which he attained by the simple and consistent utterance of his nature. He conquered, as Emerson says in speaking of the force of character over and above mere force of some special faculty, because his arrival any where altered the face of affairs. "Oh, Iole, how did you know that Hercules was a G.o.d?"
"Because," answered Iole, "I was content the moment my eyes fell upon him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see him offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the chariot race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether he stood or walked, or sat, or whatever thing he did."
Happy in his life, Jefferson was no less happy in his death, for he went peacefully to rest on the fiftieth anniversary of the great day which he had done so much to make great, the Jubilee of our national freedom,--when the shouts of the people, as they ascended from the innumerable vales, to his receding ears, must have sounded as a prelude to the swelling voices of posterity.
=Hanc.o.c.k.=
[Ill.u.s.tration: Hanc.o.c.k fac-simile of letter]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Hanc.o.c.k House, Boston]
HANc.o.c.k.
In the mouths of the people of New England, and indeed throughout the United States, the name of John Hanc.o.c.k has become a household word. In the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, where he was born, lived, and died, and in the affairs of which he took, for five-and-twenty years, so very active and leading a part, he enjoyed a degree and a permanence of popularity never yet obtained by any other man. And yet we may observe and the same thing may be noted in other and more recent instances--a remarkable fact that deserves to be pondered--that his high degree of popularity was not at all dependent upon any peculiar embodiment or manifestation on his part of the more prevailing and characteristic traits of the community about him. Indeed the popular favor which Hanc.o.c.k enjoyed would seem to have been determined, as the attachment of individuals so often is, and as has happened also in other notable instances, rather by the attraction of opposites.
And yet Hanc.o.c.k"s line of descent was such as might naturally enough have inspired the expectation of finding in him a good many more marks of the old puritan temper and manners than he ever exhibited. From the days of the first settlement of New England, down to the period of the Revolution and afterwards, the "ministers" const.i.tuted a sort of clerical n.o.bility, enjoying a very high degree of influence and consideration; and it is to forefathers of that order, that a large part of the most distinguished and influential New England families may trace their origin. The elder sons of these ministers, commonly, and the younger ones often, were educated to the profession of their fathers, long regarded in New England as the most certain road to distinction, whether spiritual or temporal. But as the demand for ministers was limited, and as their families were generally pretty large, many of their sons found it necessary to engage in the avocations of civil life, in which they not uncommonly attained to wealth and high social positions. Yet, for the most part, however zealous and successful they might be in the pursuit of temporal objects, they still continued to exhibit pretty evident marks of their clerical descent and breeding in a certain stiff, cold, and austere gravity, if not, indeed, in a certain sanctimonious air even in the very act of concluding the very tightest and sharpest of bargains;--all the attributes, in fact, comprehensively and impressively conveyed to an inhabitant of New England by the t.i.tle of _Deacon_, which office, as if still clinging to the horns of the altar, they often filled; thus becoming pillars and supports of that church of which their fathers had been the candlesticks.
The grandfather of John Hanc.o.c.k, himself called John, was for more than fifty years, as if by a sort of vaticination of the future, minister of Lexington, near to Concord; thus a.s.sociating with that of Hanc.o.c.k another name, now to all American ears so familiar as the scene of the first revolutionary bloodshed. We are told by a biographer of this first John Hanc.o.c.k, that he possessed "a facetious temper," but in the grim old portrait which still hangs on the walls of his grandson"s family mansion-house, very small traces of facetiousness appear; and so far as physiognomy goes, we should be rather inclined to look to his grandmother, to whose accompanying portrait the artist has given a fine open countenance, with something of a magnificent and voluptuous style of beauty, for the source of those social qualities and captivating manners by which their famous grandson was distinguished. The minister of Lexington had two sons, both also ministers, one of whom became his father"s colleague. The other, the father of our John Hanc.o.c.k, was settled at Braintree, near Boston, in that part of it which now const.i.tutes the town of Quincy; and it was here that in the year 1737 our John Hanc.o.c.k was born, only a short distance from the birth-place of John Adams, who was some two years his senior. The old house in which the future patriot first saw the light was destroyed by an accidental fire previous to the Revolution; and the land on which it had stood coming subsequently into the possession of John Adams, he presented it to the town of Quincy as a site for a future academy.
At the age of six or seven years, the young John Hanc.o.c.k was left without a father; but in his uncle, Thomas Hanc.o.c.k, he found a guardian and protector, who not only loved him, but was able to a.s.sist him.
Thomas Hanc.o.c.k early in life had been placed as an apprentice to a Boston stationer, and had afterwards set up in that line of business for himself: but subsequently extending the sphere of his operations, he became one of the most eminent and successful merchants of New England.
As he had no children, he adopted, as his own, his young nephew, whose affable and joyous temper had not failed to make him dear to his uncle, as they did to so many others; and having sent him to Harvard College, where he graduated at the early age of seventeen, he took him afterwards into his counting-house to be initiated into the mysteries of merchandise; and in due season admitted him as a partner. It was, perhaps, as well on business as for pleasure, or general improvement, that the young Hanc.o.c.k visited England, whither he went in company with the returning Governor Pownall, whose taste for social enjoyment was similar to his own, and where he saw the funeral of George II. and the coronation of George III., little thinking at that moment how active a part he was himself soon to take in curtailing the limits of the British monarchy, and in s.n.a.t.c.hing from the young king"s crown its brightest jewel.
Thomas Hanc.o.c.k, the uncle, died in 1764, leaving behind him a fortune ama.s.sed by his judicious and successful mercantile enterprises, of not less than $350,000, one of the largest ever acquired in Boston, up to that time, though small in comparison with several of the present day, when even ten times as much may be produced by combined good fortune, tact, and perseverance. Thomas Hanc.o.c.k bestowed by his will some considerable legacies for charitable purposes, among others a thousand pounds to Harvard College to endow a professorship of oriental languages, being thus, as the historian of the college a.s.sures us, the first native American to endow a professorship in any literary inst.i.tution;--but the great bulk of his fortune he bequeathed to his favorite nephew, $250,000 at once, and a reversionary interest in $100,000 more, of which his widow was to enjoy the use during her life.
Thus in 1764, at the early age of twenty-seven, and just upon the eve of the commencement of the revolutionary disputes with the mother country, John Hanc.o.c.k came into possession of one of the largest fortunes in the province.
Yet, though this large estate was an instrument and a stepping-stone, without the help of which Hanc.o.c.k would never have attained to that social and political distinction which he coveted and enjoyed so much, yet without his rare personal gifts and accomplishments it would have been wholly unavailing to that end; and so far from qualifying him, would have disqualified him, as it did so many other of the rich men of that time, for playing the conspicuous part he did in political affairs.
Though for some time after his uncle"s death he continued in business as a merchant, there were others who knew much better than he how to increase estates, already in the popular estimate--especially considering the use made of them--quite too large. Indeed, his business operations do not seem to have had mainly or primarily in view the making of money; for though he started new enterprises, going largely into ship-building, it was rather, at least so Hutchinson insinuates, as a politician than as a capitalist, looking more to the number of people he employed, and the increase thereby of his influence and popularity, than to the enlargement of his already plentiful fortune. There were others also who knew much better than he how to keep what they had, at least as they thought, men who used no less economy in spending their money than they or their fathers had done in acquiring it. But although the rich man who keeps his capital entire, and even increasing, is, in some sense, certainly a public benefactor, yet the fountain that overflows, sending forth a copious stream which the thirsty pa.s.sers-by are all free to drink from, or at least to look at, is always more joyfully seen and more pleasingly remembered--even though it does run the risk of some time running dry--than the deep well, whose water is hardly visible, and which, though quite inexhaustible, yet for want of any kind of a bucket that can be made to sink into it, or any rope long enough to draw such a bucket up, is very little available to the parched throats of the fainting wayfarers, who, in the spirit and with the feelings of Tantalus, are thus rather disposed to curse than to bless it.
To be able to make money is, at least in New England, a very common accomplishment, to be able to keep it not a rare one; but very few have understood so well as Hanc.o.c.k did, how to make the most of it in the way of spending it, obtaining from it, as he did, the double gratification of satisfying his own private inclinations, at the same time that he promoted his political views by the hold that he gained on the favor and good-will of his fellow-citizens.
He possessed, indeed, in a degree, those tastes which wealth is best able to gratify, and to the gratification of which it is most essential.
In the very face and eyes of the puritanical opinions and the staid and ultra-sober habits of New England, he delighted in splendid furniture, fine clothes, showy equipages, rich wines, good dinners, gay company, cards, dances, music, and all sorts of festivities. Nothing pleased him so much as to have his house full of guests to share with him in these enjoyments, and few were better qualified, by winning manners, graceful and affable address, a ready wit, a full flow of spirits, and a keen enjoyment of the whole thing, to act the part of master of the feast.
But while thus luxuriously inclined, he had no disposition for gross debauch: and the presence of ladies at all his entertainments, while it seemed to give to them a new zest, banished from his house that riotous dissipation into which mere male gatherings are so certain to sink; and which in times past, in New England, made the idea of gross dissipation almost inseparable from that of social enjoyment, nor even yet is the distinction between them fully apprehended by every body.
Among other property which Hanc.o.c.k had inherited from his uncle, was a stone mansion-house, still standing, and now in the very centre of the city of Boston, but which then was looked upon as quite retired and almost in the country. This house, which was built about the year that Hanc.o.c.k was born, fronts eastwardly on Boston Common, since so elaborately improved and converted into so beautiful a park, with its gravel walks, trees, and smooth-shaven lawns, but which was then a _common_ in the old English sense of the word, a common pasture for the cows of the neighbors, and a training field for the militia, with very few improvements except a single gravel walk and two or three rows of trees along Tremont-street. This house was situated a little west of the central and highest summit of that triple hill, which had early acquired for the peninsula of Boston the name of Trimountain,--since shortened into Tremont, and preserved in the name of the street above mentioned, which central summit was, from an early period, known as Beacon Hill, a name preserved in that of Beacon-street. This name was derived from the use to which this highest central summit had been put from a very early period--materials being always kept in readiness upon the top of it for kindling a bonfire, as a means of alarming the country round in case of invasion or other danger. After having been a good deal graded down, this summit is now occupied as a site for the State House, which, with its conspicuous dome, crowns and overlooks the whole city.
It was in this mansion-house of his uncle"s, which seems as if by a sort of attraction to have drawn the State House to its side, that Hanc.o.c.k continued to live except when absent at Philadelphia in attendance on the Continental Congress; and not content with its original dimensions, to afford more room for his numerous guests, he built at one end of it a wooden addition, since removed, containing a dining-room, dancing-hall, and other like conveniences. It was here Hanc.o.c.k, a.s.sisted by his amiable and accomplished wife, who entered into all his tastes and feelings, and who contributed her full share to give expression and realization to them, presided over so many social dinner parties and gay a.s.semblages, dressed out, both host and guests, in that rich costume which Copley, who was one of Hanc.o.c.k"s near neighbors, loved so well to paint, and of which his pencil has transmitted to us so vivid an idea.
Nor did he show himself abroad with less display than he exhibited at home, his custom being to ride on public occasions in a splendid carriage drawn by six beautiful bays, and attended by several servants in livery.
While the public attention was thus drawn upon him by a display which at once attracted and gratified the eyes of the mult.i.tude, whose envy at that time there was less fear than now of exciting, and by a generous and free hospitality, the more captivating for not being either indigenous or common, the part which Hanc.o.c.k took in the rising disputes with the mother country converted him into that popular idol, which he continued to be for the remainder of his life; and which, to one so greedy as he was of honor and applause, must have been in the highest degree gratifying. It is indeed not uncommon to depreciate the public services of such men as Hanc.o.c.k, by ascribing all to vanity and the love of distinction; as if without the impulse of these motives any great efforts would be made to serve the public! Worthy indeed of all honor are those men in whom these impulses take so honorable a direction; and happy the nation able to purchase such services at so cheap a rate!
In 1766, two years after his uncle"s death, Hanc.o.c.k was chosen, along with James Otis, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Cushing, one of the four representatives from Boston to the General Court. The seizure, two years after, of his sloop Liberty, for alleged violations of the revenue laws, in evading the payment of duties on a cargo of wine imported from Madeira, closely and personally identified him with the resistance then making throughout the colonies to the attempt to collect a revenue in America by parliamentary authority alone. This seizure led to a riot which figures in all the histories of that period, by which the commissioners of the customs were driven from the town, and in consequence of which two or three British regiments were ordered to Boston--the first step on the part of the mother country towards a military enforcement of the authority which she claimed. Hanc.o.c.k felt personally the consequences of this riot, in a number of libels or criminal informations filed against him in the Court of Admiralty, to recover penalties to the amount of three or four hundred thousand dollars, for violations of the revenue laws. "It seemed," writes John Adams in his Diary, and he had ample opportunity to know, for he was retained as Hanc.o.c.k"s counsel, "as if the officers of the court were determined to examine the whole town as witnesses." In hopes to fish out some evidence against him; they interrogated many of his near relations and most intimate friends. They even threatened to summon his aged and venerable aunt: nor did those annoyances cease till the battle of Lexington, the siege of Boston, and the expulsion of the British from that town shut up the Admiralty Court, and brought the prosecution, and British authority along with it, to an end.
At the commencement of the disputes with the mother country, the sentiment against the right of parliament to impose taxes on the colonies had seemed to be almost unanimous. The only exceptions were a few persons holding office under the crown. The rich especially, this being a question that touched the pocket, were very loud in their protests against any such exercise of parliamentary authority. But as the dispute grew more warm and violent, threatening to end in civil commotions, the rich, not doubting that the mother country would triumph in the end, and fearing the loss of their entire property in the attempt to save a part of it, began to draw back; thus making much more conspicuous than ever the position of Hanc.o.c.k as a leader of the popular party. Indeed there was hardly a wealthy man in Boston, he and Bowdoin excepted, both of whom had not acc.u.mulated but inherited their property, who did not end with joining the side of the mother country. And the same thing may be observed of Ma.s.sachusetts, and indeed of New England generally. Of all the larger and better-looking mansion-houses, of eighty years old and upwards, still standing in the vicinity of Boston, of which the number is considerable, there are very few that did not originally belong to some old tory who forfeited his property out of his very anxiety to preserve it. Hanc.o.c.k"s acceptance of the command of the company of cadets or governor"s guard, whence the t.i.tle of colonel by which for some time he was known; his acting with that company as an escort, at the funeral of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, who was very obnoxious to the patriots; his refusing to go all lengths with Samuel Adams in the controversy with Hutchinson as to the governor"s right to call the General Court together, elsewhere than in Boston; and the circ.u.mstance that although he had been several times before negatived as a member of the council, Hutchinson had at length allowed his name on the list of counsellors proposed by the General Court; these and perhaps some other circ.u.mstances excited indeed some suspicions that Hanc.o.c.k also was growing lukewarm to the popular cause. But these he took care to dissipate by declining to sit as counsellor, by acting as orator at the Anniversary of the Boston Ma.s.sacre, and by accepting, not long after, an appointment as one of the delegates to the Continental Congress. The oration above alluded to, delivered in March, 1774, and which Hanc.o.c.k"s enemies pretended was written for him by Dr. Cooper, was p.r.o.nounced by John Adams, who heard it, "an eloquent, pathetic, and spirited performance."
"The composition," so he wrote in his diary, "the p.r.o.nunciation, the action, all exceeded the expectation of every body. [These last were certainly not Cooper"s.] They exceeded even mine, which were very considerable. Many of the sentiments came with great propriety from him.