Docno: ADMS-06-01-02-0082-0012
Author: Adams, John
Author: Cushing, Thomas
Author: Hawley, Joseph
Author: Adams, Samuel
Author: Hancock, John
Author: Worthington, John
Author: Pickering, John Jr.
Author: Warren, James
Author: Whitcomb, John
Author: Massachusetts House of Representatives
Date: 1770-11-16
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16 November 1770.
MS not found. Printed:
Mass., House Jour., 1770–1771, p. 164. Prepared by a committee appointed 16 October composed of Thomas
Cushing, Samuel Adams, Joseph Hawley,
JA, John Hancock, John Worthington, John Pickering Jr., James Warren, and John Whitcomb
(same, p. 97).
In its report the committee dealt with the colony's economic problems, recently aggravated
by the Boston merchants' vote to end the nonimportation of most British goods (for
this vote of 12 Oct., see
Massachusetts Gazette, 15 Oct.). The House adopted the committee's resolutions calling on members of that
chamber to “use their utmost Endeavors, and enforce them
[their fellow citizens] by their Example, to discourage Prodigality and Extravagance” and “to discourage
the Use of Foreign Superfluities, and to promote our own Manufactures in the several
Towns we represent.”
Pursuant to these resolutions, Thomas Cushing, John Hancock, William Heath, Samuel
Adams,
JA, Ebenezer Thayer, Samuel Bacheller, Samuel Howe, and Benjamin White were appointed
“to prepare a Plan for the Encouragement of Arts, Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce,
and report at the next Session” (
Mass., House Jour., 1770–1771, p. 164). No plan for the encouragement of manufactures was introduced
at the fourth session of the General Court (April 1771), but see
JA, Diary and Autobiography,
2:2, for an account of a meeting on 7 or 8 February 1771 of the committee charged with
drawing up this plan.