“Your Countrymen must fail in a contest with this great and powerfull people”

Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s mission to London in 1774 was a failure after its first week, and he didn’t know it.

Quincy met with the prime minister on 19 November. Four days later the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, told Thomas Hutchinson that Lord North had concluded Josiah Quincy, Jr., was “a bad, insidious man, designing to be artful without abilities to conceal his design.”

Hutchinson wrote back to Robert Auchmuty in Massachusetts, “If the remarks which Ld. North made upon the first visit are truly reported, there will probably be no second visit to cause a dispute.” You think?

Dartmouth went into his own meeting with Quincy the next day. It didn’t go any better. The earl had also heard “Quincy intended to go to Holland,” seeking military supplies or other support from one of Britain’s rivals, which provided another reason to mistrust the young attorney from Massachusetts.

In that same week John Williams set up one other meeting for Quincy with a royal official: Corbyn Morris, a long-time Commissioner of His Majesty’s Customs. On 22 November, Quincy recorded in his journal:

Dined with Corbin Morris Esqr., one of the Commissioners of the Customs, (supposed framer of the annual ministerial budget, being a choice friend of the Ministry) in company with one of the officers of the Treasury and Jonathan [sic] Williams Esqr. Mr. Morris was sensible, intelligent and very conversible. The who[le] conversation was on American affairs. He enter[ed] largely into the claims, the rights and the duty of Parliament. He spoke as might be expected. I observed a remarkable conformity of sentiments between him and Lord North, and an equally observable similarity of language. Mr. Morris expatiated largely upon the infinite resources of Commerce[,] wealth and power of the English nation. I heard him.

The following address to me was a little singular, not to say laughable—but I never smiled. “Mr. Quincy you are a man &c. (flummery). You have seen some of the ministry and have heard more of the disposition of [the] administration. You find that they have no inclination to injure, much less to oppress the Colonies. They have no wish, but that of seeing the Americans free and happy. You must be sensible of the right of Parliament to legislate for the Colonies, and of the power of the nation to enforce their laws. No power in Europe ever provoke[d] the resentment or bid defiance to the Powers of this Island, but they were made to repent of it. You must know your Countrymen must fail in a contest with this great and powerfull people. Now as you find how inclined Administration are to lenity and mildness, you should, you ought to write to your friends this intelligence, and endeavour to influence them to their duty. I don’t doubt your influence would be very great with them, and you would by this means be doing a lasting service to the Country.” ! ! !

Morris was apparently trying to give Quincy straight talk: the Crown government was constitutionally sound, beneficent, powerful, determined, and—for a limited time—willing to be lenient. But Quincy found the warning “laughable.” He even appears to have been suspicious that Lord North had said much the same thing.

Quincy might also have felt that Morris’s suggestion he use his “influence” to win over other Massachusetts Whigs might be followed by a financial reward for his “lasting service.” Quincy was already “upon my guard against the temptations and bribery of Administration.” One man in Massachusetts even told his sister that he ”loved money too much, to be trusted at a Court where every thing is bought and sold.” So he was determined not to bend his position.

Quincy remained in London, talking to local supporters of the American cause. But he had no more access to people who were actually in power. In early December Lord Chief Justice Mansfield told another official “Quincy had desired to see him, but he would not admit him.”

In early March 1775, Josiah Quincy, Jr., sailed home. By the time his ship arrived off the coast of Massachusetts, the province was at war and he was dying.

TOMORROW: More failure of communication.