right, and they were resolute.

In about a month after Governor Bernard had solved the problem how such
bankrupts in reputation as Joseph Warren, James Otis, John Hancock, and
Samuel Adams ruled the town as with a rod of iron, there was (June 10,
1768) a real mob. The Board of Customs directed the revenue officers,
for alleged violations of the revenue laws, to seize the sloop Liberty,
owned by Hancock, which they did on a Friday, near the hour of sunset,
as the men were going home from their day's work. And as though the
people contemplated forcible resistance to the law, and would refuse to
respect the arrest, the sloop, after the broad arrow was put upon her,
contrary to the advice of the Collector, was moved, with vulgar and
rough words by the officers, from the wharf where she lay, and moored
under the guns of the Romney. This was the beginning of a war of
epithets, in the usual way of brawls, between the crowd, which kept
increasing, and the custom-house officers,--and, by a sort of natural
law of mobs, grew into a riot, in which the offending officials were
severely pelted with dirt and stones. It is related, that, while Warren,
Hancock, and Samuel Adams were in consultation, the mob broke the
windows of the residences of the Comptroller and Inspector, and dragged
the pleasure-boat of the Collector to the Common, where they burned
it. But here Hancock and other popular leaders went among them, and
succeeded in restoring quiet. These were outrages, and could not be
justified, though the parents of them were the brutal words of the
captain of the Romney and the mob procedure of the officers in taking
the vessel, which was detained three days without any legal process
being filed against her. After all, this was a very slight affair when
compared with the contemporary terrific mobs of London and elsewhere,
which did not spare the highest officials, and, instead of stopping at
breaking glass, pushed into the most costly houses, made complete havoc
of furniture, destroyed life, and were checked only by military force
and bloodshed. In view of these, Colonel Barre might truly say in the
House of Commons, that, in this riot, "Boston was only mimicking the
mother-country."

But the officials, and especially the Commissioners, all but Temple,
chose to consider the mob as quite original and American, and as proof
that the people of Boston were ripe for open revolt. They regarded the
excitement that arose as confirming thi