Hancock was aristocratic, cultured and complacent. He was the richest man
in New England. His personal interests were on the side of peace and the
established order. But circumstances and the combined tact and zeal of
Adams threw him off his guard, and in a moment of dalliance the seeds of
sedition found lodgment in his brain. And the more he thought about it,
the nearer he came to the conclusion that Adams was right. But let the
fact further be stated, if truth demands, that both John Hancock and
Samuel Adams, the first men who clearly and boldly expressed the idea of
American Independence, were moved in the beginning by personal grievances.

A single motion made before the British Parliament by we know not whom,
and put to vote by the Speaker, bankrupted the father of Samuel Adams and
robbed the youth of his patrimony.

The boy was then seventeen; old enough to know that from plenty his father
was reduced to penury, and this because England, three thousand miles
away, had interfered with the business arrangements of the Colony, and
made unlawful a private banking scheme.

Then did the boy ask the question, What moral right has England to govern
us, anyway?

From thinking it over he began to formulate reasons. He discussed the
subject at odd times and thought of it continually, and, in Seventeen
Hundred Forty-three, when he prepared his graduation thesis at Harvard
College he chose for his subject, "The Doctrine of the Lawfulness of
Resistance to the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth Can Not Otherwise
be Preserved."