University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

Since the year 1676, Massachusetts had not
known a more bitter and uncompromising enemy to
her interest and happiness than Edward Randolph;
but to enumerate all his acts of tyranny and aggression
would be endless. From an avaricious and
needy adventurer, he finally became, through gross
misrepresentations of the resources of the colony, an
agent in the hands of the crown, to strip Massachusetts
of all her privileges, that thereby the luxurious
wants of a corrupt government might be the more
amply supplied. It was through the immediate instrumentality
of that bad man, that the charter was

taken from Massachusetts, and all the lands of her
yeomanry confiscated to the use of the crown; regranted
only on payment of half its value in money,
and burthened with the most arbitrary and ruinous
exactions.

That such a character should have been detestable
in the sight of the people, may be readily imagined.
He received their just execrations, and was
hooted at wherever he went as an insidious foe to
the rights of man, who was ready to commit any act
of infamy for gain. There was hardly an instance of
robbery or oppression disconnected with the name of
Edward Randolph: he was a party to all actions for
ejecting the rightful tenant from his soil, and was
constantly associated with the very name of tyranny.

During the struggles of the people to bring about
a better state of things, Randolph was mean enough
to add the characters of hypocrite and spy to his
other odious offices, and on the occasion of the Fair,
he had disguised himself as a Catholic priest, the
better to watch the movements of the people, especially
of those individuals, who, from a more daring
spirit, had placed themselves in the front rank of
the assertors of the natural and chartered rights of
man.

He now stood confounded and abashed, however
hard he struggled to disguise his confusion, in the
presence of those whom he had been vile enough to

dog to their privacy, and take advantage of in their
seclusion. Had he fallen in with less conscientious
enemies, he would have been at once sacrificed to
their resentment, an expedient that might have been
justified by the necessity of the cause. As it was,
his foes had no desire to take his life, believing that
he might be made an example to others without the
shedding of his blood.

The little band of patriots looked at each other
with amazement when they became assured that the
pseudo priest was no other than the hateful agent of
British tyranny, the loathed and detestable Randolph.
The man himself seemed to be fully conscious of his
odious position, and was the first to break the silence
that reigned for a time after the announcement of
his name on his discovery.

“Well!” said he, looking round on his captors,
“and what do you intend to do now? You have detected
me in doing what I thought to be my duty, and I
suppose I must remain at your disposal.”

“Your duty!” exclaimed Randal, with bitter and
indignant sarcasm; “your duty! Yes, you have
done your duty as the vampyre does his; you have
lived on the life-blood of others, and are now bloated
with the butchery of human happiness. And to
finish all, you would see us hanged as traitors,
and exult in our destruction!”

“On my life, I would not!” replied Randolph, unable
to disguise his apprehension of what might be

the termination of his adventure, which looked so
inauspicious in the frowns of his captors; “on my
life and honor, I would not betray you!”

“Hear him!” cried Grummet, with a sort of angry
laughter, “he promises by his honor!—I wonder
how much his bond would bring on such a rotten
bottomry as that!”

Randolph cast an angry look at the sailor, which
he could not restrain, but he deigned no reply. His
only hope seemed in the forebearance of the others, for
the man-o'-war's-man looked any thing but mercy.

“And what treatment do you expect from us?” inquired
Harding; “you have, on your own confession,
followed us like a puppy all this day, and, by your
contemptible hyprocrisy, become possessed of our
most important secrets. Do you imagine that we
can trust you?”

“Never!” simultaneously exclaimed the two mechanics.

“You cannot believe that we can confide in you
for a moment,” added Harding.

“I'd trust a cable of sea-weed sooner,” said the
sailor, scornfully. “I tell you what it is, my hearties;
you jest hang on to his figure-head, while I go
down to the booths yonder. Hold on a bit, will
you?”

So saying, Grummet bolted from the cave, and
was out of hearing before his companions had time to
inquire as to his purpose in going, though they suspect

ed that he was meditating some plan of punishment
for the would-be Catholic priest.

As the sailor left the cave, Randolph looked imploringly
on those who remained behind; for he entertained
too well-founded fears that the man had gone away
so suddenly, with none of the kindest intentions toward
himself.

“For pity's sake,” said he, addressing them in a
subdued and humble tone of voice, “for pity sake,
have mercy on me, and save me from the violent
hands of that rough sailor and the mob. Let me go,
I beseech you, for if he returns with the posse, I shall
stand a small chance to save my life. It is terrible
to think of the indignation of an incensed crowd.”

“Especially when one feels as you must,” rejoined
Randal, “that he deserves the severest retribution
at their hands.”

“Whatever I may deserve for mistaken opinions
or past misconduct,” replied the self-abasing hypocrite,
“you may depend on me for the future. We
are only poor, weak mortals, the best of us, and are
exceedingly liable to error. If I have heretofore
done wrong to the colony, I have it in my power to
make ample reparation, and I will do so. Forgive
me this once, and you shall never have cause to regret
your clemency.”

The three friends looked at each other hesitatingly,
and then withdrew a little to confer with each
other on the expediency of suffering him to depart.

Harding and Bagnal seemed, on the whole, willing
to trust the prisoner; but Randal declared that the fellow
would certainly deceive them. They finally determined
to allow him to escape, judging rightly
enough, that if he were detained in close custody his
absence might create suspicion and alarm on the part
of the government; and that if he were made a public
spectacle, it would be impossible to prescribe bounds
to the popular fury, which might result disadvantageously
to their cause.

“You are at liberty to depart, Mr. Randolph,” said
Harding, addressing the prisoner, “and as you were
lately in our power, so now we remain in yours.
You have promised on your honor not to betray us,
and the majority of us are willing to take your word.
Go, Sir, leave us!”

Randolph bowed to them, and without uttering
one word of acknowledgment, departed: but as he
left the cave he muttered to himself, “Fools! I will
not betray you, but your intentions shall be made
known to the government, immediately.” With this
jesuitical determination, he took a circuitous route
that he might avoid the encampment and the enemies
he most dreaded; then stepping on board the
ferry-boat, he was conveyed to Boston, where, without
any delay, he repaired to the house of Sir Edmund
Andros, and made known to him the intentions of the
insurgents.

Randolph had not been gone many minutes, before

the three patriots, who had suffered him to depart,
recognised the voice of their coadjutor, returning
with a crowd of others from the Fair. Randal and
his companions had left the cave, and were about
half way between that place and the encampment.
The sound of the approaching voices through the
crowded oaks, indicated that the people were in a
high state of excitement. And so indeed they were;
for Grummet had run to the tavern, and through
the booths, shouting out for the enemies of tyranny
to follow him, for that Randolph, the British agent,
had been taken by some patriots on the borders of the
lake, who were about to hang him “at the yard-arm
of a tree.”

At such a summons, and on such an occasion, it
may be supposed that a large crowd would eagerly
rush onward, when the greater part of people had
nothing to do but smoke their pipes and get intoxicated,
especially when there was any mischief
a-foot, and one so hateful as Randolph was promised
for their bloody entertainment. They did not
stop to inquire what was meant by the “capture of
Randolph;” it was enough, and they were grateful
for it, that an excuse had been afforded them for
raising a disturbance. Any thing is acceptable to
man by which he can forget himself for a season.
Man will and must be diverted from brooding over
his own individuality. Hence drunkenness, rioting,
and all sorts of disorder, where stimulants of a milder

kind are denied for popular divertisement: hence a
proportionate absence of the grosser pleasures, where
a love of the fine arts has been cherished and cultivated.
When will they be cherished and cultivated
in glorious America? A voice from afar replies—
“When the love of money shall not be her all-engrossing
evil!”

And here, while the vox populi is bellowing at the
heels of the sailor, and all hands are in the eager pursuit
of a coarse and transitory self-forgetfulness, let us
pause for a moment to reflect on what was hiuted, at
the close of the last paragraph, relative to the progress
of taste among Americans; for it is to the development
of taste that we must ultimately look, as the
only means of ridding ourselves of our most
odious characteristic, the exclusive love of money-getting.

In too many cases, amidst our overgrown commercial
cities, may be seen an exemplification of the truth
that good taste is not the growth of a single generation.
Go to the palaces of some among the merchant-princes,
and bewail that it is not so; and bewail too,
the “blessed ignorance” that shuts out from the eyes
of the vulgar-elegant, the consciousness that amidst
all their luxury and wealth, they show not a particle
of refinement. Sit down on the costly ottomans amidst
the Madams Malaprop, and go away thankful for a decent
education, though you dine at a shilling ordinary.
Gaze at the costly furniture, but don't laugh at

the daubs on the walls—'till you depart; and then
thank heaven that you have at least escaped that
form of the ridiculous, among the follies of the
times.

If instead of lavishing tens of thousands on the
works of the cabinet-maker and upholsterer, men
would send to our Greenough, Powers, Cole, Doughty,
and their like, for a better kind of furniture; the
higher class of society, the virtuous and refined,
when they condescend to visit the merely rich and
voluptuous, would find something else to admire besides
the viands and the wines, or the gaudy, tinsel
trappings of luxurious mammon. It is a little remarkable,
that English travellers have generally overlooked
the very faults in which our society most
abounds; while they have principally enlarged on
manners which do not so properly belong to society,
as to individuals thrown together from all parts of the
world by accident, each scrambling for himself.
How absurd it would be to decide on American manners
at our public tables, which are every day crowded
with foreigners and strangers, and where hardly
two individuals have been formed by the same rules!
and yet to such places we are indebted for the severest
strictures on our habits and manners, when perhaps
the most glaring instances of impropriety might
have been traced to the satirist's own countrymen.

No; gentlemen travellers from abroad! or lady travellers!
should haply any such one of these days be

found, if you tell the whole truth about us, you will
leave all your predecessors in the back-ground; while
the probability is, that it would have been told long
ago if there had not been too great a congeniality of
coarseness between the observers and the observed.
Travellers of any respectability should find their way
among those who do not pretend to elegance, because
it is natural to them, and they ought to know that it
is as unreasonable to expect to find the same manners
and customs in America, which they had been
accustomed to see in England, as it would be to look
for the same climate or institutions. It ought to be
the glory of Americans that they are themselve alone,
and that they have not been moulded according to
bad influences abroad. The class of purse-proud individuals
which are the peculiar bane of society, are
those who, having nothing more than wealth to give
them consideration, look down from their bad elevation
on all whom they fancy to be beneath them,
while they overlook the truth that nothing but modesty
and gentle cultivation can confer true respectability,
and save them from the hydra-headed monster,
selfishness.

But to return to Watertown. The shouts of the people
grew louder and more loud, till, as they approached
the three patriots, the latter bagan to doubt
whether it would be prudent for them to encounter
the crowd, which, on finding themselves baulked in
their expectation, might, for aught they could judge

to the contrary, wreak on them the vengeance that
they were determined to bestow on Randolph. They
had hardly time, however, to resolve the matter in
their minds, before Grummet broke from the wood, followed
by more than a hundred people, some of whom
were armed with clubs, and others bearing a rope,
the application of which, as intended, could be no matter
of question.

“This way, my hearties, bear a hand here to the
starboard! the old pirate is stowed away in the hole
yonder. Hurrah! for the yard-arm and a running
bow-line.”

“Hurrah!” burst forth from a hundred discordant
throats, with an accompaniment of oaths, curses, and
imprecations, all levelled at Randolph, whom they
even now imagined to be within their power, a sacrifice
to their just indignation.

The moment Grummet encountered his friends,
he cried out:

“Hullo, my hearties! are you here? where have
you lodged the chaplain?—He's in the hole, aint
he?”

And he was on the point of rushing by them in
his eagerness to reach his victim, when the voice of
Randal stopped him.

“Randolph has escaped!” cried the anchor-smith,
in a tone of voice that was intended to deceive the
crowd by its significance of regret.

“Escaped!” exclaimed Grummet in astonishment.

“Escaped!” echoed a score of others in similar
surprise and disappointment.

“Which way did the rascal go?” demanded several,
impetuously.

“That's more than we can tell you,” replied Randal,
“for as soon as we followed him from the cave
he had disappeared among the trees, and that was the
last we have heard of him.—Pray didn't you meet
him on the way?”

“Do you think he would be fool enough to throw
himself in our course?” inquired the sailor, whose chagrin
at the loss he had encountered was already evinced
in his manner; “never mind, my hearties! let's
give chase to the old pirate, and damme, we'll overhaul
him yet. Clap on your studding-sails, my boys,
and scatter to all points: we'll have him yet. Three
cheers for the chase, hurrah!”

To this appeal, the infuriated multitude replied
with enthusiasm, and away they went in every direction,
in hope of overtaking their object; but he was
already safely seated in the ferry-boat, having in
the interim made the best use of his loco-motive
with ten springs, that a frightened man could command.

After vainly pursuing Randolph, the scattered multitude
returned to his encampment under the guidance
of the sailor, and vented their unexhausted anger

on every object that came within their reach.
By this time Classon had joined them, and amidst the
fellowship of intoxication, they forgot all their animosity
towards him in the admiration they had for
his excesses. The man was stark mad with brandy,
and was foremost among the mob in demolishing
tents, breaking furniture, and spreading devastation at
random. The whole ground occupied for the Fair,
presented one aspect of ruin.

The mechanics, with their new friend witnessed the
scene of violence with mortification and sadness.

“Alas!” exclaimed Harding, “how little mankind
are to be trusted. Who could have calculated on
such a termination of things as this?”

“It is human nature,” replied Randal, “men will
have an outlet for their feelings, and so we see the
innocent suffering for the guilty.”

“Such an exhibition of lawless violence,” said Harding,
mournfully, “is enough to make us pause
awhile before we set the wheel of Revolution a-going.
Who can tell how things will end, and who can say
how far they may go, or what excesses may follow a
serious popular movement?”

“Never fear the consequences;” said Randal, and
his friends joined him in the sentiment, “the madness
you have seen to-day could not well occur in Boston;
on her we principally depend for the tone which
will be given to the revolution.”

As they bent their steps in the direction of the metropolis,

they recapitulated the substance of the conversation
which had engaged them during the day,
so far as it related to the great object of their hopes
and wishes, and they interchanged many conjectures
as to the sincerity of Randolph's promises, and the
probability of his treachery.

“I have not a particle of confidence in him,” insisted
Randal, “the man is so thoroughly unprincipled,
that with all his assurances of being faithful to us,
you may rely on it he will lay the whole plan before
the governor. We ought to have kept him confined,
and not suffered him to escape.”

“But only think,” urged Harding, “only think
what the consequences would have been, had we
given the wretch over to the fury of the multitude!”

“It would have saved the property of many an unoffending
man, which has now been sacrificed to
their disappointment.”

“And have ruined our cause completely,” added
Bagnal, who siding with the tutor, did all he could to
reconcile his friend to the course they had adopted.

But Randal was immoveable in his opinion, and he
parted with Harding in the vicinity of the College,
with sad forebodings that their enterprise would be
defeated.

The two friends proceeding on their way to Boston,
took the ferry-boat at the Point, and reached the
metropolis as the last rays of the sun were receding
from the summits of the three hills.