onists," was by no means "to be reckoned the most inveterate and
active of all the Conspirators against our rights. There are others on
this side of the Atlantick who have been more insidious in plotting
the Ruin of our Liberties than even he, and they are the more infamous,
because the country they would enslave, is that very Country in which
(to use the words of their Adulators and Expectants) they were 'born and
educated.'" Of all these restless adversaries and infamous plotters of
ruin, the chief, in the mind of Samuel Adams, was probably Mr. Thomas
Hutchinson.

Judged only by what he did and said and by such other sources of
information as are open to the historian, Thomas Hutchinson does not
appear to have been, prior to 1771, an Enemy of the Human Race. One of
his ancestors, Mistress Anne Hutchinson, poor woman, had indeed been--it
was as far back as 1637--an enemy of the Boston Church; but as a family
the Hutchinsons appear to have kept themselves singularly free from
notoriety or other grave reproach. Thomas Hutchinson himself was born
in 1711 in Garden Court Street, Boston, of rich but honest parents, a
difficult character which he managed for many years to maintain with
reasonable credit. In 1771, he was a grave, elderly man of sixty years,
more distinguished than any of his forebears had been, having since
the age of twenty-six been honored with every important elective and
appointive office in the province, including that of governor, which
he had with seeming reluctance just accepted. It may be that Thomas
Hutchinson was ambitious; but if he elbowed his way into office by
solicitation or by the mean arts of an intriguer the fact was well
concealed. He was not a member of the "Caulkers' Club." So far as is
known, he was not a member of any club designed "to introduce certain
persons into places of trust and power"; except indeed of the club,
if one may call it such, composed of the "best families," closely
interrelated by marriage and social intercourse, mostly wealthy,
enjoying the leisure and the disposition to occupy themselves with
affairs, and commonly regarding themselves as forming a kind of natural
aristocracy whose vested duty it was to manage the commonwealth. To this
club Mr. Hutchinson belonged; and it was no doubt partly through its
influence, without any need of solicitation on his part, that offices
were thrust upon him.

One morning in September, 1760--it was the day following the death of