Free War by Edward Cline Page A

in Williamsburg the other day, trooping with the burgesses to that tavern. Later the next day, after I had left the Capitol ball, I found this fixed to the hostelry door. I had expected to see your name here, and was oddly disappointed that I did not.” He held up the broadside for Hugh to read.
    “And you would have seen it,” Hugh exclaimed with disgust, “had I not believed it already there! You see, I debated the points contained in that document, won some arguments and lost others, and volunteered to help prepare several drafts of it for Mr. Randolph and his committee, correcting the grammar and pointing, and when it was ready for Association signatures, I naturally believed I had already signed it!” He laughed and shook his head in self-mockery. “What a trick of the mind! I was exhausted that day, but determined to spend not another night in Williamsburg, and did not wait for copies to be printed and distributed.” He smiled at his friend. “Well, it is done. May I see it?”
    “Or, not done,” remarked the captain, amused. Roger handed him the broadside over the desk. “I am obliged to take it with me, Hugh, and include it with my report. I have collected a number of such broadsides, from Georgia and the Carolinas, every one of them certain to displease General Gage.”
    Hugh read it, shaking his head, but commented, “Doubtless from the press of Mrs. Rind, of the other
Gazette
. We had voted her late husband’s paper the official purveyor of Assembly news the very day the Governor dissolved us.” He handed it back over the desk to his friend. “By all means,Roger, give it to General Gage, and let him dare be displeased with the mettle of true Englishmen! Although, he has probably already been sent a copy by certain loyal members of the House as evidence of sedition.”
    Roger carefully refolded the sheet and returned it inside his coat. “I can guarantee that he will read it, and that he will be displeased.”
    “So be it.” Hugh paused. “Are you still sitting for Bromhead?”
    “Yes, of course. I must own that I am feeling some guilt about that, since I am not there to represent the place. With good fortune, I will return to London in time for the next session.” Roger looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “You know, Hugh, some years ago, when we were hunting game on the heath, you said to me that you looked forward to the empire that Mr. Pitt had in mind then, an empire stretching from Margate to the Mississippi. You don’t seem to believe in that now.”
    “I remember that day, Roger,” said Hugh. “It was an empire of reason I spoke of then, not of slavery. And, I still believe in it.” He paused to sip his Madeira. “Until now, Roger, our political wisdom has been drawn from England. But, the time has come for the colonies here to impart some harsh wisdom to England.”
    Roger grimaced. “The Crown may harshly dispute you on that point.” He leaned forward to say, “Hugh, I must own that although wisdom is wanting in London, the wisdom you and other pamphlet writers have to impart is
not
wanted.” He sat back in the chair. “The men who would be receptive to your wisdom are not in office, nor are they likely to be appointed to it.” He smiled sadly, and nodded up to the framed crayon portrait of the late member for Swansditch on the wall, next to the group figures of the Society of the Pippin he had last seen in Danvers many years ago. “There was our mutual friend Mr. Jones, of course, but you know what happened to him.” After a pause, he added, “I am convinced that your uncle was somehow responsible for his murder.”
    “I have never been able to persuade myself otherwise,” said Hugh. “He is a distant, incurable canker.” Garnet Kenrick had written to him over the years since Dogmael Jones’s murder that his brother, Basil Kenrick, Earl of Danvers, had become ambitious enough to even deign to speak frequently in Lords in support of all the legislation that