oubt that Mr. Hutchinson was in
error, but from the difficulty of constructing an argument that might be
regarded as polemically adequate. At the request of Major Hawley,
John Adams was accordingly "invited, requested, and urged to meet the
committee, which he did every evening till the report was finished."
When the first draft of a reply, probably drawn by Dr. Joseph Warren,
was presented to Mr. Adams for his criticism, he "modestly suggested to
them the expediency of leaving out many popular and eloquent periods,
and of discussing the question with the Governor upon principles more
especially legal and constitutional," there being in this first
draft, so Mr. Adams thought, "no answer, nor any attempt to answer the
Governor's legal and constitutional arguments, such as they were." And
so, being "very civilly requested" by the committee to make such changes
in the draft as seemed to him desirable, Mr. Adams "drew a line over the
most eloquent parts of the oration they had before them, and introduced
those legal and historical authorities which appear on the record."

The reply, prepared in this way and finally adopted by the Assembly,
was longer and more erudite than Mr. Hutchinson's address. To meet the
Governor's major premise and thus undermine his entire argument, legal
precedents and the facts of history were freely drawn upon to prove
that the colonies were properly "outside of the Realm," and therefore,
although parts of the Empire by virtue of being under the special
jurisdiction of the Crown, not subject in all matters to parliamentary
legislation. Law and history thus supported the contention, contrary to
the Governor's assertion, that a line not only could be but always had
been "drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total
independence of the colonies." Apart from any question of law or fact,
the Assembly thought it of high practical importance that this line
should be maintained in the future as in the past; for, "if there be no
such line," none could deny the Governor's inference that "either
the colonies are vassals of the Parliament, or they are totally
independent"; upon which the Assembly would observe only that, "as it
cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the parties in
the compact that we should be reduced to a state of vassalage, the
conclusion is that it was their sense that we were thus independent."
With very few exceptions, everyone who was of the patriot way of
t