09 of 56 · Rhode Island
HOPKINS
An Old Man's Guide
28 lessons. 4 chapters. In his own words.
His hand shook. He held the pen with his left and signed anyway. Age is not a discharge.
Stephen Hopkins · 1707–1785 · Governor · merchant · second-oldest signer
01
The Shaking Hand
1 of 4
Do not let another man sign your death warrant for you.
“No. I will sign it myself — if we are hung for signing it, you shall not be hung for it for me.”
John Adams, recollection of 1818 · 1818
Adams offered to write the name. Hopkins refused the clerk on the one paper that can hang. Borrowed courage is a forgery. Shake, blot, own it.
Price the country in lives, not in comfort.
“The liberties of America would be a cheap purchase with the loss of 100,000 lives.”
Benjamin Rush, Characters of the Signers · 1776
Rush heard him say it in the year of the signing. An old Friend, talking butcher's arithmetic. If the number scares you, you are still shopping. Buy.
The modest man is the one who will stand.
“He had never known a modest man that was not brave.”
Benjamin Rush, Characters of the Signers · 1776
Said walking home from Congress. Not a toast. A field note. Loud men audition. Quiet men have already decided. Hire the second.
Keep the table awake after the motion dies.
“Governor Hopkins of Rhode Island, above seventy Years of Age kept us all alive. Upon Business his experience and judgment were very useful. But when the business of the evening was over, he kept us in conversation till eleven, and sometimes twelve o'clock.”
John Adams, Autobiography · 1776
The navy was built after hours. Age in a chair is not a nap. It is a second shift. Stay until the young have to go to bed first.
Honor is the paper you write with the bad hand.
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
The Declaration of Independence · 1776
Clerks for cargo. The left hand on the right wrist for the wager. Palsy is a description of the fingers. It is not a discharge from the name.
Confirm the good opinion. Do not decorate it.
“Governor Hopkins and Ward of Rhode Island have confirmed, every Good opinion which had been formed.”
John Adams to James Warren · 1775
Two old rivals, yoked. Adams did not need a speech. He needed the men to be as advertised. Be the rumor that survives inspection.
Hold the wrist. Sign anyway.
“If my hand trembles, John Bull will find my heart won't.”
John Adams, recollection of 1818 · 1818
Later telling, maybe embroidered. The sight was the policy: fear in the fingers, none in the vote. Let the young watch an old man refuse to go home.
02
A Small Place
2 of 4
Equal right does not scale with acreage.
“The British subjects in America have equal rights with those in Britain; they do not hold those rights as a privilege granted them, nor enjoy them as a grace and favor bestowed, but possess them as an inherent, indefeasible right.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
Rhode Island, a long name and a short map. He published the theory ten years early. If the small place is right, the large places have to read it. Being small is not a vow of silence.
A molasses tax is how an empire tests a sentence.
“A duty of three pence per gallon on foreign molasses is well known to every man in the least acquainted with it to be much higher than that article can possibly bear, and therefore must operate as an absolute prohibition.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
Not stamps yet. Sugar. He wrote while they still thought it was about casks. Wait for the outrage and you are a chorus. Write while they think it is bookkeeping.
When the shock is coming, write the other towns.
“You will consider how natural it is for those who are oppressed, and in the greatest danger of being totally crushed, to look around every way for assistance and advice.”
Letter to Samuel Adams, on the Gaspee · 1772
They burned a royal schooner in Narragansett Bay. London wanted the men shipped to England for trial. Hopkins mailed Boston. A small colony that does not call for help is volunteering to be the example.
Do not lend your warrant to a foreign hangman.
“Then, for the purpose of transportation for trial, I will neither apprehend any person by my own order, nor suffer any executive officer in the Colony to do it.”
Stephen Hopkins, as Chief Justice, on the Gaspee · 1773
Chief justice of the pond. The Crown wanted bodies. He would not sign for the boat. A local bench that ships its own people abroad has already resigned. Keep the bodies. Keep the court.
Union is a defense plan, not a poem.
“It is proposed that humble application be made for an act of Parliament of Great Britain, by virtue of which one general government may be formed in America, including all the said colonies.”
He sat that congress with Franklin, twenty-two years before the parchment. Rhode Island still killed the plan. Being early on union does not make your neighbors ready. Carry the drawing home anyway. They will need it when the French are no longer the point.
The charter is the ticket you emigrated on.
“By all these charters, it is in the most express and solemn manner granted that these adventurers, and their children after them forever, should have and enjoy all the freedom and liberty that the subjects in England enjoy.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
Not a favor from this king. A contract the grandfathers bought with an ocean. If London forgets the paper, read it aloud. A small colony lives on parchment longer than on muskets.
Do the local offices. They are the gymnasium.
“Although each of the colonies hath a legislature within itself to take care of its interests and provide for its peace and internal government, yet there are many things of a more general nature, quite out of reach of these particular legislatures.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
Governor, chief justice, assembly — decades in a pond. Then Congress. Men who skip the pond arrive in Philadelphia as tourists. The little republic is how you learn the large one.
03
The Rights of Colonies
3 of 4
Name the two conditions. Do not live in the fog between.
“Liberty is the greatest blessing that men enjoy, and slavery the heaviest curse that human nature is capable of. Those who are governed at the will of another, and whose property may be taken from them by taxes without their own consent, are in the miserable condition of slaves.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
He used the word slavery for political bondage in a colony that knew the other kind. The sentence still cuts. A small place is not innocent. It can still be precise. Be precise first.
They who are taxed at pleasure own nothing.
“They who are taxed at pleasure by others cannot possibly have any property, can have nothing to be called their own.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
Property without consent is a rumor. This is not poetry. It is a title search. If the Commons can reach into the chest at will, the chest is already theirs. Say so before the stamp.
Consent is the whole of government.
“British subjects are to be governed only agreeable to laws to which themselves have some way consented, and are not to be compelled to part with their property but as it is called for by authority of such laws.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
Not petitioned. Consented. If they will not give you the Commons, they do not get the revenue. That is not rebellion yet. It is bookkeeping of legitimacy.
Two sorts of men. Do not join the second by paper.
“There are but two sorts of men in the world, freemen and slaves. For one who is bound to obey the will of another is as really a slave though he may have a good master as if he had a bad one.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
The kind master is the trap. Status is not a mood. A tax without a vote is a change of species. Treat it that way and the Declaration is only the same sentence spoken in public.
A pamphlet is a militia of one.
“Had the colonies been fully heard before the late act had been passed, no reasonable man can suppose it ever would have passed at all in the manner it now stands.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
He wrote this against the Sugar Act, ahead of the Stamp Act storm. Ink is cheaper than powder and travels faster. Spend the cheap weapon first. Keep the powder for the year the pamphlet is no longer enough.
Those who want liberty at home must spend some of it outward.
“Those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others.”
Rhode Island Act against the importation of slaves · 1774
He had held people. Then he pushed the colony's ban on importing more. The sentence is the right one. The biography is not clean. Do the act anyway. Hypocrisy that legislates is still more use than purity that doesn't.
Let Parliament have the ocean. Keep the town.
“Hence it becomes the indispensable duty of every good and loyal subject cheerfully to obey and patiently submit to all the acts, orders, and regulations that may be made and passed by Parliament for directing and governing all these general matters.”
The Rights of Colonies Examined · 1764
He was not yet a separatist. General matters — trade among the whole — he would grant. Internal tax he would not. Know the line you will still die on. A man who will not grant anything is not a negotiator. He is a pose.
04
Keep the Seat
4 of 4
When the colony has already broken, stop pretending you need a hint.
“I observe that you have avoided giving me a direct answer to my queries concerning independence; however the copy of the act of the Assembly, which you have sent me, together with our instructions, leave me little room to doubt what is the opinion of the colony I came from.”
Letter on the Rhode Island Act of Independence · 1776
May 4, Rhode Island renounced the king first. He was already in Philadelphia. The mail did the arguing. Read the instruction. Then vote as if you had been in the room that wrote it.
Convert the drink into the work.
“His custom was to drink nothing all day, nor till eight o'clock in the evening, and then his beverage was Jamaica spirit and water. It gave him wit, humour, anecdotes, science and learning. Hopkins never drank to excess, but all he drank was immediately converted into wit, sense, knowledge, and good humor.”
John Adams, Autobiography · 1776
The Naval Committee sat at night. The old man brought Milton and rum and a navy. Vice that produces a fleet is still a tool. Abstain all day. Spend it on the work. Go home when the young are finished talking.
Do not confuse a long letter with a general.
“He disliked hearing long letters from the Generals of our Army, and used to say he never knew a General Quillman that was good for anything.”
Benjamin Rush, Characters of the Signers · 1776
Despatches are not victories. A man who writes like a campaign is usually losing one. Want the field report. Want it short. Then send powder, not a reply in kind.
Yoke the rival when the work is larger than the feud.
“He attached himself in early youth to the study of books and men.”
Sanderson, Biography of the Signers · 1820
Hopkins and Samuel Ward spent years ruining each other's elections. Then the colony sent both to Congress. A feud that cannot be parked for independence was never about the colony. Park it. The reading was for the room, not the faction.
Fit the ships. The ocean does not care that you are old.
“The pleasantest part of my labors for the four years I spent in Congress from 1774 to 1778 was in this Naval Committee. Governor Hopkins of Rhode Island, above seventy Years of Age, kept us all alive.”
John Adams, Autobiography · 1776
His brother Esek got the first Continental fleet. Politics sat at that table too. Still: Rhode Island asked for a navy when the continent thought it chimerical. Ask. Then sit the evening until the vote exists.
Read until the room can borrow your shelves.
“A venerable old man of the Society of Friends, of an original understanding, extensive reading, and great integrity. He perfectly understood the principles of liberty and government.”
Benjamin Rush, Characters of the Signers · 1800
Surveyor, governor, ironmaster, judge. The reading was not a hobby. Adams said the flow of his soul made all his books theirs. Arrive having already done the hours. Then the night committee is not a seminar. It is a transfer.
Second-oldest is not an excuse to go home.
“He perfectly understood the principles of liberty and government and was warmly attached to the independence of his country.”
Benjamin Rush, Characters of the Signers · 1800
Born 1707. Died 1785. Franklin was older; Hopkins was the lesson for everyone else. A seat is a watch. Palsy is not the hour. Stay until the body truly cannot. Continuance is a kind of authorship.