Thomas Somers

“ On Monday, the excitement instead of subsiding, was fanned to a fever heat; Pinchbrook Harbor was in a glow of patriotism. Men neglected their usual occupations, and talked of the affairs of the nation. Every person who could procure a flag hung it out at his window, or hoisted it in his yard, or on his house. The governor had called out a portion of the state militia, and already the tramp of armed men was heard in the neighboring city of Boston.
Thomas Somers was employed in a store in the village, and during the forenoon he mechanically performed the duties of his position ”

“ The financial affairs of the Somers family, therefore, were not in a very prosperous condition, and the solvency of the house depended entirely upon the adjustment with uncle Wyman. The mortgage note which Squire Pemberton held would be due in June, and as the creditor was not an indulgent man, there was a prospect that even the little cottage and the little farm might be wrested from them.
The family at home consisted of Mrs. Somers and three children. The two oldest daughters were married to two honest, hard-working fishermen at the Harbor. Thomas and John were twins, sixteen years of age. ”

“ But it ought to be remarked that, till Swift turned Tory, he always extolled Somers not only as the most accomplished, but as the most virtuous of men. In the dedication of the Tale of a Tub are these words, "There is no virtue, either of a public or private life, which some circumstances of your own have not often produced upon the stage of the world;" and again, "I should be very loth the bright example of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to other eyes, both for their sake and your own." In the Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions at Athens and Rome, Somers is the just Aristides. ”

“ The address had scarcely been moved when the House called for copies of the papers relating to Kidd's expedition. Somers, conscious of innocence, knew that it was wise as well as right to be perfectly ingenuous, and resolved that there should be no concealment. His friends stood manfully by him, and his enemies struck at him with such blind fury that their blows injured only themselves. Howe raved like a maniac. "What is to become of the country, plundered by land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid hold on our lands, our woods, our mines, our money. ”

“ But the greatest man among the members of the Junto, and, in some respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as a writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence. He had left a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, during four years, been always heard with delight ”

“ Vertue, a strict Roman Catholic, was raised by the discriminating and liberal patronage of Somers from poverty and obscurity to the first rank among the engravers of the age.
The generosity with which Somers treated his opponents was the more honourable to him because he was no waverer in politics. From the beginning to the end of his public life he was a steady Whig. His voice was indeed always raised, when his party was dominant in the State, against violent and vindictive counsels ”

“ The essense of politics is compromise. It is therefore not strange that some of the most important and most useful political instruments in the world should be among the most illogical compositions that ever were penned. The object of Somers, of Maynard, and of the other eminent men who shaped this celebrated motion was, not to leave to posterity a model of definition and partition, but to make the restoration of a tyrant impossible, and to place on the throne a sovereign under whom law and liberty might be secure. ”

“ No good would have been done by rejecting the bill for disbanding the troops, unless the King could have been furnished with the means of maintaining them; and with such means he could be furnished only by the House of Commons. Somers, in a speech of which both the eloquence and the wisdom were greatly admired, placed the question in the true light. He set forth strongly the dangers to which the jealousy and parsimony of the representatives of the people exposed the country. ”

“ What great ruler can be named who has not committed errors much more serious than the penning of a few sentences of turgid nonsense? This, I admit, sounds plausible. It is quite true that very eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Chatham and his son, all committed faults which did much more harm than any fault of style can do. ”

“ Near a hundred lords were present. Somers, whose serene wisdom and persuasive eloquence had seldom been more needed, was confined to his room by illness; and his place on the woolsack was supplied by the Earl of Bridgewater. Several orators, both Whig and Tory, objected to proceeding farther. But the chiefs of both parties thought it better to try the almost hopeless experiment of committing the bill and sending it back amended to the Commons. The second reading was carried by seventy votes to twenty-three. It was remarked that both Portland and Albemarle voted in the majority. ”

“ I’m not half so much afraid of your being killed by a bullet, as I am of your being ruined by bad men.”
“You needn’t fear any thing of that kind, mother.”
“I shall pray that you may be saved from your friends as well as from your enemies. We shall see you again before you go off, I hope.”
“Yes, mother; we shall not be sent south yet.”
“Don’t forget to read your Testament, Thomas,” said Mrs. Somers.
“I won’t, mother,” replied the soldier boy, as he again shook hands with all the members of the family, kissed his mother and his sisters, and hitching up his knapsack, took his place in the ranks. ”

“ The farmers complained that the home-market for their produce was unremunerative and unsatisfactory; the masses of the people complained with no less reason that the money wages of labour could not purchase them the usual necessaries of life. Macaulay, in his History of England, says of this period, with little exaggeration, that “the price of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. The labourer found that the bit of metal which, when he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he purchased a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence.” ”

“ Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of great abilities, who used to talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover the bottom of his heart. In the Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen's Ministry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one unconversable fault, formality. It is not very easy to understand how the same man can be the most unreserved of companions and yet err on the side of formality. ”

“ William was too wise not to know the value of an honest man in a dishonest age. The very scrupulosity which made Nottingham a mutineer was a security that he would never be a traitor. [94]
The bill went down to the Lower House; and it was full expected that the contest there would be long and fierce; but a single speech settled the question. Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even an audience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity of the doctrine held by the high Tories. ”

“ The feudal system was breaking up; a wage-earning population was rapidly increasing both in the farms and in the towns; but the spirit of feudalism remained, and the iron collar of serfdom was riveted round the necks of the labourers by these statutes many generations after they had become nominally freemen. ”

“ Boys are instinctively curious to know what is going on, and the “living room” of the squire, in which the exciting conversation was taking place, was in the rear of the house. The windows on the front were dark and uncommunicative. The boys were restless and impatient; if there was to be any fun, they wanted to see it. Thomas was as impatient as his fellows, and being more enterprising than the others, he determined, while obeying the instructions of Captain Barney in the spirit, to disobey them in the letter. ”

“ The corn statutes of the next twenty years, though occupying an enormous amount of time and attention in the Houses of Parliament, may be briefly treated, for they are simply a record of the impotence of legislation to maintain the price of a commodity at a high point when all the natural economic causes in operation are opposed to it. ”

“ I’m not going to tolerate a traitor because he has a mortgage on my father’s house. Besides, that is a fair business transaction; the squire gets his interest.”
“Mother is afraid of him, as she is of the evil spirit.”
“Women are always timid,” said John, sagely.
“By George! there comes the very man himself!” exclaimed Thomas, as he discovered a horse and chaise slowly approaching. ”

“ A singularly bold and ingenious expedient occurred to Somers and was approved by William. It was that a proclamation should be prepared with great secresy, and published at once in all parts of the kingdom. This proclamation was to announce that hammered coins would thenceforth pass only by weight. But every possessor of such coins was to be invited to deliver them up within three days, in a sealed packet, to the public authorities. ”

“ One of the most severe trials to which the head and heart of man can be put is great and rapid elevation. To that trial both Montague and Somers were put. It was too much for Montague. But Somers was found equal to it. He was the son of a country attorney. At thirty-seven he had been sitting in a stuff gown on a back bench in the Court of King's Bench. At forty-two he was the first lay dignitary of the realm, and took precedence of the Archbishop of York, and of the Duke of Norfolk. ”

“ CORN LAWS. In England, legislation on corn was early applied both to home and foreign trade in this essential produce. Roads were so bad, and the chain of home trade so feeble, that there was often scarcity of grain in one part, and plenty in another part of the same kingdom. Export by sea or river to some foreign market was in many cases more easy than the carriage of corn from one market to another within the country. ”

“ Foreign import was to be permitted only at and above the point of prices where the export of domestic produce was prohibited. The landed interest had now adopted the idea of sustaining and equalizing the value of corn, and promoting their own industry and gains, which for four centuries, under various modifications of plan, and great changes of social and political condition, were to maintain a firm place in the legislation and policy of England. ”

“ The United States promotes transit and export of grain, internally and externally, with all the intelligence and resources of a civilized people. Although the import duty on “breadstuffs” imposed by the United States tariff is very high, and is, possibly, a useful protection against the importation of “baker’s products,” yet it is to a certain extent unnecessary for a country which must dispose of its surplus by exportation. The same remark applies to Russia, whose exportation and importation are alike free, though there is an import duty on wheat flour of 2s. ”

“ The company was recruited nearly up to its maximum number, and was then attached to the —th regiment, which had just been formed and ordered to Fort Warren.
On the 27th day of May, the company, escorted by the patriotic citizens of Pinchbrook, marched to Boston, and Tom took a sorrowful farewell of his mother, his brother and sisters, and a score of anxious friends.
“Now don’t let the rebels hit you in the backbone, Thomas,” said gran’ther Green, as he shook the hand of the soldier boy.
“No, gran’ther; if I can’t fight, I won’t run away,” replied Tom. ”

“ In the British colonies probably the only example of an export duty is that on rice in British India; it amounts to 3 annas per maund (4d. per cwt.) . The import of grain into India is free. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and all mainly agricultural countries, there is no export duty. In each of these countries, however, there is an import duty ”

“ Yet surely the presumption is that what the most honest and honourable men of both parties, Nottingham, for example, among the Tories, and Somers among the Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogether inexcusable; and a very sufficient excuse will without difficulty be found. ”

“ The prohibition of export discouraged agricultural improvement, and in so much diminished the security and liberality even of domestic supply; while the intolerance of any home dealing or merchandise in corn prevented the growth of a commercial and financial interest strong enough to improve the means of transport by which the plenty of one part of the same country could have come to the aid of the scarcity in another. ”

“ Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have watched the new men, might have checked them when they were wrong, might have come to their help when, by doing right, they had raised a mutiny in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague and Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more powerful than they could be while they filled the highest posts in the executive government and were outvoted every day in the House of Commons. Their retirement would have mitigated envy ”

“ Only at the close of Elizabeth’s reign (1603) did a spark of new light appear in a further statute, which removed the futile provisions in favour of tillage and against enlargement of pastoral farms, and rested the whole policy for promoting an equable supply of corn, while encouraging agriculture, on an allowed export of wheat and other grain at a duty of 2s. and 1s. 4d. when the price of wheat was not more than 20s., and of barley and malt 12s. per quarter. The import of corn appears to have been much lost sight of from the period of the statute of 1463. ”