• 12 • “THE GREATEST THREAT TO AMERICAN LIBERTIES”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF CONTINUATION OF THE PROCEEDINGS, 1770, ISSUED IN BOSTON SAME YEAR AS THE BOSTON MASSACRE, DOCUMENTING THE “CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS” 12(HUTCHINSON, Thomas) (ADAMS, John) (ADAMS, Samuel) (HANCOCK, John). A Continuation of the Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay. Boston, 1770. Slim octavo, period-style full tree calf gilt, custom slipcase. $8000 First edition of the momentous work that documents powerful legal and philosophical debates in a stand-off between Boston patriots and Hutchinson over his command to remove the Massachusetts Court from Boston amidst fury over the recent Boston Massacre, causing colonial leaders to rage against “the most valuable of our Liberties from being wrested from us,” this rare edition “almost certainly a major cause” of the Declaration of Independence “accusing the King of calling ‘together legislative bodies at place… distance from the repository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance.” On March 8, 1770, three days after the Boston Massacre, thousands of mourners attended the funerals of Crispus Attucks, James Caldwell, Samuel Gray and Samuel Maverick. That same day Lt. Governor Hutchinson, who succeeded Francis Bernard as Massachusetts' royal governor, ordered the General Court to be taken from Boston and compelled to meet in Cambridge. With that, he “provoked a constitutional crisis in Massachusetts and instigated a controversy which lasted for more than two years” (Calhoon & Lord). Seen as “the most villainous, traitorous person in the land” (Bailyn, 282), to Founding Father Samuel Adams he was “a ‘pimp rather than a governor’” (Calhoon & Lord), and John Adams “considered Hutchinson to be the greatest threat to American liberties” (Webking, 80). This rare first edition of Continuation begins with Hutchinson’s July 25, 1770 speech at the opening of the Court’s Second Session. In answer, Boston’s leaders refused to conduct business in Cambridge, and authorized a report that “introduced the strongest use of natural law yet attempted by the Court” (Calhoon & Lord). The Committee’s report, primarily drafted by Samuel Adams, declares, in part: “We are obliged... to prevent the most valuable of our Liberties from being wrested from us, by the subtle Machinations and daring Encroachments of wicked Ministers... [including] Armies stationed here without our Consent; and the Streets of our Metropolis crimson’d with the Blood of our Fellow Subjects” (emphasis in original). With wood-cut engraved initial, head- and tailpiece. Evans 11733. Sabin 45695. Text quite fresh with lightest scattered foxing. Beautifully bound.
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