Browsing: Papers of John Adams, Volume 1

6 November 1770. MS not found. Printed: Mass., House Jour., 1770–1771, p. 134–135. Prepared by a committee appointed 2 November composed of Daniel Leonard, Samuel Adams, JA, Joseph Hawley, and David Ingersoll Jr. (same, p. 128).

After voting to conduct business despite their removal to Cambridge, members of the House added the phrase “in general court assembled” to the usual form for the authority under which provincial statutes were enacted. The committee described above was appointed immediately after the House received Hutchinson's protest that the “Stile of enacting” new laws would force him to violate instructions of thirty years' standing which required the governor to allow only the form “by the Governor, Council and House of Representatives” (same, p. 128). The committee's report of 6 November declared that the additional phrase was “of Substance, and necessary,” but the House did not press the matter. As Hutchinson pointed out, the representatives “sent for their bills from the council, took out the exceptionable words, and omitted them in all the other bills passed in the session” (Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo, 3:226).

JA himself referred to the matter as a “laboured controversy,” which he mentioned in passing in his Autobiography only as the inspiration for Governor Shirley's remark on “this brace of Adams's” who served in the House in 1770 (Diary and Autobiography, 2:54–56, 3:295). For a discussion of the usage of the controversial phrase in earlier provincial statutes, see Mass., Province Laws, 5:139–140.

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.

20 November 1770. MS, engrossed copy, signed by Hutchinson (M-Ar). Printed: Mass., Province Laws, 5:109–111. Prepared by a committee appointed 16 October composed of JA, John Worthington, and Joseph Hawley (Mass., House Jour., 1770–1771, p. 98).

The need to regularize limitations on suits at law was one of the “important Matters” cited by Hutchinson in his plea to the House to resume business in June (same, p. 23). Legislation limiting such actions had been passed in earlier years, but had been “repeatedly suspended before it could have any operation” (Hutchinson to Board of Trade, 21 Dec. 1770, Mass., Province Laws, 5:143; a list of earlier statutes on limitations of actions is printed at p. 109). The committee was ordered to consider “all the Laws relating to the Limitation of Actions, reduce them to one Bill, and report.” In the absence of earlier draft versions it is impossible to assess the contributions made by the House committee.

MS not found. Printed: Mass., House Jour., 1770–1771, p. 171–172. Prepared by the committee on the state of the province, appointed 16 October (see calendar entry for 16 Nov., above).

After its exchange of messages with Hutchinson on the Castle William controversy in mid-October (see calendar entry for 1723 Oct., above), the House ordered the committee on the state of the province to take affidavits from Capt. John Phillips, former commander of the fort, and from Stephen Hall, former chaplain of the post (Mass., House Jour., 1770–1771, p. 145). Hutchinson recalled that the House “gave him notice by a committee, that they should proceed to examine witnesses present at the transfer [of Castle William], and that he might be present at the examination, if he thought fit. This he did not think in character, but did not think proper to interrupt them” (Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo, 3:224).

The committee report based on these investigations was presented in the form of a message to Hutchinson. As adopted by the House on 20 November, the message remonstrated against the Lieutenant Governor's having, “merely in Obedience to Instructions,” surrendered command of Castle William, “a Power . . . which by the Charter is vested in [him] for the Safety of the People” and prayed that Hutchinson would “take effectual Measures, that the Power of garrisoning his Majesty's Castle-William, may be restored to the Governor of the Province to whom it by Charter it belongs.”