officials, the word ran through the ranks,--"Let there be no mobs, no
riots. Let not the hair of their scalps be touched." Hard as it is to
restrain the rash, when the popular passion is excited, not a life was
sacrificed, not a limb even was dislocated, by the patriots of Boston in
political action, until the ripe hour of the Lexington rising.

In this way Massachusetts, when called upon to stand by old customs and
rights, acted not only in a spirit of fidelity to liberty, but also in a
spirit of loyalty to law and order. Her conduct in the Stamp Act crisis
turned towards her the eyes and drew towards her the hearts of the other
Colonies, and elevated her into what was then a perilous, but is now a
proud, pre-eminence; and the call was made on her (1767) in the journals
of other Colonies, and copied into the Boston papers, as "the liberties
of a common country were again in danger," "to kindle the sacred flame
that should warm and illuminate the continent." So instinctively did the
common peril suggest the thought and expression of a common country.

The Loyalists, for years, put Boston as in a pillory for punishment. It
was (they said) the head-quarters of sedition. It was the fountain of
opposition to the Government. It was under the rule of a trained mob.
It was swayed to and fro by a few popular leaders. It was the nest of a
faction. James Otis and Samuel Adams were the two consuls. Joseph Warren
was one of the chiefs. John Hancock was possessed of great wealth and of
large social and commercial influence. Such leaders, bankrupts on the
exchange or in character, controlled everything. They controlled the
clubs,--and there was not a social company or political club that
did not claim to have to do with the Government: they controlled the
town-meetings,--and these were the instrumentalities of rebellion: and
the town-meetings controlled the legislature, and this controlled the
Province. Then the local press was filled with incendiary matter from
the cabinet of the faction. Thus the spirits who led in the clubs, the
town-meetings, and the legislature supplied the seditious writing that
was scattered broadcast over the Colonies, and poisoned as it spread.

There was some truth in this Loyalist strain. Patriotic rays gathered
and drew to a focus in Boston, and there became intensified with a
steady power. The town had jealousies to encounter and prejudices to
overcome; but, as if to the manner born, it acted in a spiri