Not Afraid of Poverty

Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence by Charles Augustus Goodrich, circa 1834, opens with a thorough introduction summarizing events which led to the Declaration of Independence.

As the colonies began forming committees of correspondence, unifying their message was not confined to legislative bodies.

Numerous meetings were called in the various towns of the provinces, in relation, as well to this particular measure, as to other oppressive acts of the British parliament.

In these meetings, the town of Boston took the lead. A committee was appointed to address the several towns in the colony, and to urge upon them the importance of an unanimous expression of their feelings with regard to the conduct of the British ministry. “We have abundant reason to apprehend,” said this committee, in their address, “that a plan of despotism has been concerted, and is hastening to a completion; the late measures of the administration have a direct tendency to deprive us of every thing valuable as men, as Christians, and as subjects, entitled to the rights of native Britons.” — “We are not afraid of poverty,” said they, in conclusion, — “but we disdain slavery. Let us consider, we are struggling for our best birth rights and inheritance; which, being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyment, and trifling in their value.”