ch the
despots of England wanted to bring about by sending Hancock and Adams
over seas for trial! Bernard, Oliver, and Hutchinson were busy in
getting evidence against the Patriots of New England, especially
against Adams. Affidavits were sent out to England to prove that he
was a fit subject to be transported for "trial" there. And an old
statute was found from the enlightened reign of Henry VIII.
authorizing that mode of trial in case of such "misdemeanor."
Commissary Chew wished that two thirds of the lawyers and printers
were shipped off to Africa "for at least seven years." Edes and Gill,
patriotic printers in Boston, and "all the authors of numberless
treasonable and seditious writings," were to go with them.[107] They
were all guilty, very guilty! Gentlemen of the Jury, they committed
"misdemeanors," they "obstructed officers," they resisted the process
of despotism! But alas--

"The Dog it was that died."

[Footnote 106: 6 Bancroft, 250, 251, 291; Sabine's Loyalists, 207, _et
al._]

[Footnote 107: 6 Bancroft, 250, 251, 291; Sabine's Loyalists, 207, _et
al._]

Edes and Gill never saw Africa; the patriotic lawyers and printers
made no reluctant voyage to England.

"The Dog it was that died."

Bernard, Hutchinson, Oliver, and their coadjutors went over the seas
for punishment after being tried at home by a Law older than the
statute of Henry VIII.; a law not yet repealed, Gentlemen, the Higher
Law which God wrote ineffaceably in the hearts of mankind; and
indignant America pronounced sentence--Tories, Traitors! Commissary
Chew learned a lesson at Saratoga in 1777. And the Franklins, the
Mayhews, the Hancocks, the Adamses, they also were tried at home, and
not found wanting; and the verdict! Gentlemen of the Jury, you know
what verdict America has pronounced on these men and their kinsfolk!
There is only one spot in the United States where the Hutchinsons, the
Olivers, the Bernards are honored,--that is where the Adamses, the
Hancocks, the Mayhews, and the Franklins, with the principles of
justice they gave their lives to, are held in contempt! Where is the
one spot, that speck of foreign dirt in the clean American garden? It
is where the Democratic Herod and the Whig Pilate are made friends
that they may crucify the Son of Man, the Desire of all nations, the
Spirit of Humanity--it is the court of the Fugitive Slave Bill judges,
the Gabbatha of the Kidnappers. Look there!

In 1765 it was too lat