uld see in
the little self-directing communities that clustered about the village
church and the public school but a race of nobodies. He may be pardoned
for not finding greatness in art, literature, or science in the circle
that has been called the Athens of America; he could not be expected to
measure the rich and enduring fame of a Jonathan Edwards; and it was an
article in the then Oxford creed, that there could not be, unmoulded by
the influences of an hereditary nobility, such a general product as a
people lifted up by education and religion into a self-directing race of
high-minded men, as the basis of a State. But a small class of British
observers, who had other principles and other eyes, saw now in Boston
the most orderly town and the most intelligent and moral people on the
face of the earth; and said--the words were printed (1768) in London,
and reproduced in the local press here--that no people since the ruin of
the Roman Commonwealth seemed to entertain more just ideas of liberty
or breathed forth a truer spirit of independence than these American
colonists. Now Governor Bernard and his political friends regarded the
chafings of such a people at what they held to be palpable aggressions
on their established system of local government as the acts of a trained
mob, and proofs of a long-matured design to cast off allegiance to the
British crown and of an immediate purpose of insurrection; and for years
they systematically urged, and attempted to fortify their policy by the
most unscrupulous misrepresentations, that nothing could check this
anarchical element and traitorous design but the abrogation of
fundamental parts of the local constitution and the implanting of a
feudal exotic by military power. The people claimed to be as free as the
English were, and the calumnies were heaped on them of being anarchists
and rebels.

This theory of insurrection was acted upon by the Governor as long as
he remained in the Province. Every hasty word of the violent, and every
public deliberation of the wise as well, were made to nurture this
theory. By acting on such premises, besides doing gross injustice to the
people, he made himself ridiculous. Still he clung tenaciously to his
error and his plans as long as he remained in office; and even after he
returned to England, the course of the Patriots continued to strengthen
his convictions, and he wrote back that it was "plainly the design of
the chiefs of the Boston factio