itarian sentiments of the eighteenth-century _philosophe_, he
joined hands with Jefferson and the Lees to form the radical party. It
was this party which carried Virginia into rebellion against England.
And it was this party which destroyed the domination of the little
coterie of great planters by abolishing entail, disestablishing the
Anglican Church, and proclaiming a state constitution founded, in theory
if not altogether in fact, upon the principles of liberty and equality
and the rights of man.

From the point of view of most cultivated and conservative Americans,
admirable indeed were the restrained and conciliatory arguments of John
Dickinson in support of the right of the colonies to be taxed only by
their own representatives. But how vulnerable was his position in
defending the existing government in Pennsylvania, by which the three
Quaker counties, with less than half the population of the province,
elected twenty-four of the thirty-six deputies in the assembly! "We
apprehend," so runs a petition from the German and Scotch-Irish counties
of the interior, "that as freemen and English subjects, we have an
indisputable title to the same privileges and immunities with his
Majesty's other subjects who reside in the counties of Philadelphia,
Chester, and Bucks." German Protestants and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians,
resenting Quaker domination more than they feared British tyranny, and
the mechanics and artisans and small shopkeepers of Philadelphia,
unwilling "to give up our liberties for the sake of a few smiles once a
year," made the strength of the radical and revolutionary party in
Pennsylvania. Opposed to all attempts to infringe their rights "either
here or on the other side of the Atlantic," they at last gained control
of the anti-British movement, and made use of it, employing the very
arguments which Dickinson and his kind had used in resistance to British
oppression, to overthrow the Quaker-merchant oligarchy that had so long
governed the colony in its own interests.

One day in 1772 old Governor Shirley, then living in retirement, heard
that the "Boston Seat" was responsible for the opposition to
Hutchinson's administration. When they told him who it was that made the
Boston Seat, he is said to have replied: "Mr. Cushing I knew, and Mr.
Hancock I knew, but where the devil this brace of Adamses came from I
know not." He might have been told that they had risen from obscurity to
inject into politics the acrid