His Honor says “he express’d his doubts of his abilities to give the country satisfaction.” I supposed him sincere. Yet the next breath he denies he ever gave me any reason to suppose that he was determined to refuse the place. I would with all humility ask whether those very doubts did not furnish me with one reason to suppose his Honor would refuse? It was natural for me to conclude his Honor would not accept of a place of that importance, without a modest assurance of his own abilities. I am glad the receipt of the letter is not forgotten; and that ’tis admitted no answer was ever given to it.
His Honor in the piece I am now considering has made one or two strange mistakes in point of fact: He charges me with asserting that he “sollicited the Governor for the place of Chief Justice.” If his Honor will be pleased to peruse my piece of Monday last once more he will find I positively assert no such thing. “A promise of the much sollicited favour was obtained” are my
[print edition page 71]
words; by whom sollicited I did not say. That it was very much sollicited for his Honor, I think may be pretty fairly deduced from these words, “The Governor was pleased to say that the major voice seemed to be in my favour.” I wish his Honor had informed us who began the several conversations from time to time between his Excellency and himself, by which the reader would have been a little better enabled to judge who sollicited.
If his Honor would furnish me with a list of the company that dined at the Cattle the day he met me at Dorchester-Neck, and the time of day they dined, I should take it as a favor. I don’t remember ever meeting his Honor at that place but once, that was the Monday after judge SEWALL’s death. I dined at home mounted my horse about three in the afternoon, and just on this side the Fortification I was over taken by his Honor in his chariot with Mr Paxton. I rode more moderately than they did, for when I got down to the Neck, I found them coming over with his Excellency and Capt. Phillips. I saw no other company, understood they drank tea and return’d. They could not have been on the island an hour.
That I told his Honor that if he had any tho’ts of the place, his interest could not be expected, is natural; as ’tis that I should tell him no person would be more agreeable to Col Otis. All this was but a decent return for the many “Civil things” his Honor said but no great penetration is necessary to discover that this must have been upon supposition Col Otis should be refused; and so it was actually expressed. His Honor won’t easily persuade the world that any man can prefer the interest of a friend to his own, at the very time he is professedly seeking his own. But a mutual openness between friends is always due. The reason for not answering the letter is curious, “The son had declared that neither he nor his Father would give up their pretensions to the Lieut. Governor, nor any one else.” Had his Honor been as open, it might have saved him the loss of as good a friend, as he ever had in his life. As to the son, he could pretend to no interest, being a private man, and only a messenger to deliver the letters. Upon my being informed about a fortnight after my interview with his Honor, that the Governor had been persuaded that Col. Otis had given up his pretensions I tho’t it my duty to wait on his Excellency, and tell him, I knew of no such thing, nor did I believe it; and that the only colour for such a story was, my having said to the Lieutenant Governor and Secretary, that I believed his Honor would be more agreeable to Col. Otis than any man, if his own pretensions were rejected. But his Honour was informed that I had uttered revengeful threats, of mischief, flames &c. I wish this &c had been supplied, because I fear some of his Honor’s admirers will collect more from it than ever Lord Coke made out of one of Littleton’s. This most cruel and inhuman charge which never
[print edition page 72]
was tho’t of till the late prosecution of some of the officers of the admiralty, set on foot by a number of worthy merchants, and in which, by reason of my old acquaintance with Mr. Paxton, I would not engage until I had his express consent and advice to it, however angry he grew against me afterwards, only for the faithful discharge of an unsought trust in the way of my profession. Before this, I challenge his Honor to prove one syllable of this kind being a “town talk.”
But if this and a thousand times more was true, ’twould be no sufficient excuse for his Honor’s conduct, and neglect in not answering the letter. He was, I repeat it, under great obligations to Col. Otis, but for whose friendship, he would have been out of the council ten years ago, and in consequence of it at this time, perhaps a private gentleman. Col. Otis for years made himself more enemies by espousing his Honor’s interest, than by all the rest of his conduct in life. Often has his Honor been availed of the credit of measures at the old insurance office, that he had no more weight or influence in than I had. As often have his adorers & others blam’d Col. Otis, for measures he was trying to moderate, and which a former Governor was spurr’d on to by the present prime minister of this province. All this considered, should not his Honor have wrote his friend, that his son was ruining his father’s interest? Wou’d it have been an infinite condescention to have sent for the son, and have dealt with him in a christian-like manner? But his Honor “tho’t it most prudent to say nothing to Mr. Otis or his father upon the subject,” ’till the place was secured to himself; and then he never said a word to either, of those terrible threats. His Honor’s doubts of his abilities were now wonderfully cleared up, and “a call in providence was conscientiously listened to for the good of the people” a loud trumpeting by his relations and friends, that no other man in the province was fit for such a trust in point of capacity, or integrity, may be pretty well remembered, if intimations of the same kind never escaped his Honor. How far his Majesty has given his sanction to such an opinion, may be partly collected from his appointing BENJAMIN PRAT, Esq; to be Chief Justice of N. York.
His Honor roundly asserts he soon after had reason to suspect that those threats were carrying into execution. That his Honor is suspicious, I will not dispute; but that he had soon after, or even to this day has, one solid reason to suspect me guilty of what he has prejudged, I defy him to prove. Suspicion is a very different thing in my logic, from reason for suspicion. I call upon his Honor therefore for his reason, and he may depend upon it ’tis of more importance to him to take care & muster up a good reason for this assertion, than to vindicate himself against any thing I said of him last Monday, which is however all literally true; and if it could be doubted his
[print edition page 73]
Honor’s paper of this day has confirm’d it, in the opinion and, to the grief, of some of his best friends. His Honor must not flatter himself that the world will readily believe all the hard things he has been pleased to say of me, meerly upon his suspicion. ’Tis probable enough that I might say about the time refer’d to, that I fear’d his Honour would never cease engrosing places of power & profit for himself, his family, and dependents, ’till he had set the province in a flame. That is not only my present opinion, but I believe the opinion of some thousands who never saw his Honor ’till he rode the circuits. Unreasonable and unbounded desires of power and profit, and of such places as can’t be legally executed by the same man, are apt to generate arbitrary power, oppression, uneasiness, animosities, civil dissentions, and in independent states, civil wars; but then these evils are to be attributed to those who usurp undue dominion, not to those who oppose it. After all, if the pretended threats were uttered, which I am satisfied never were, every unprejudiced man of common humanity would excuse them as rash unadvised words of heat and passion, especially, when uttered in the cause of an injured father, and, as there has been nothing done by me to disturb the quiet of the