?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--PRELUDE.) Early printing of the Massachusetts Circular Letter which united colonists against the Townshend Acts, in an issue of the Boston Chronicle. Pages [121]-128, 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, disbound; masthead slightly cropped, minor wear. Boston: Mein & Fleeming, 14 March 1768
Includes an early printing of the Massachusetts Circular Letter. It was drafted by Samuel Adams and James Otis for the approval of the colony's House of Representatives on 11 February 1768 in response to the onerous Townshend Acts. "Imposing duties on the people of this province, with the sole and express purpose of raising a revenue, are infringements of their natural and constitutional rights; because, as they are not represented in the British parliament, his Majesty's commons in Britain, by those acts, grant their property without their consent." Not only did Massachusetts protest this taxation without representation, they circulated their resolution to the other colonial legislatures, a form of collective action which the Crown found threatening. The Massachusetts legislature was shut down, British troops occupied Boston, and two years later the Boston Massacre followed.
With--the 27 June issue of the Boston Chronicle, featuring supportive responses to the Massachusetts Circular Letter from the legislatures of Georgia, Virgina, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and a considerably less amiable exchange between the Massachusetts legislators and the Earl of Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the Colonies. Boston, 27 June 1768.
