this time was an enemy to the
town and the Province, and a disturber of the peace and good order of
both.

The Governor was now on good terms with the people. He was in the habit
of saying that nothing which he had done would bring troops into the
town,--that he was desirous of promoting harmony between the Province
and the mother-country,--and the memorial to the Ministry in their
behalf contained the assurance that they bore "the same sentiments of
loyalty and duty towards their gracious King, and the same reverence for
the great council of the nation, the British Parliament, as ever." This
was the truth, touchingly expressed. The Bostonians never considered
the Parliament to be such an embodiment of Imperialism that it
could rightfully mould their local institutions, or control their
congregations and their town-meetings, their highways and their homes;
and always looked upon the Crown as the symbol of a national power that
would shield their precious body of customs and rights. Thus what the
Governor said on the paramount point of nationality met with an honest
response from those to whom it was addressed. "I am myself," he wrote,
(June 18,) "on better terms with the people than usual. A civil
treatment of a petition of the town to me, a plain and friendly answer
thereto, and some real service by interposing with the men-of-war, have
given me a little popularity. But it won't last a week. As soon as I
have executed the orders I have just received from the Secretary of
State, in the General Assembly, there will be an end of my popularity;
and I don't know whether I sha'n't be obliged to act like the captain of
a fire-ship,--provide for my retreat before I light my fusee."

But he quietly lighted his fusee, when the horizon became all aglow with
what to the Loyalists was the lurid flame of destruction, but to the
Patriots was as light from heaven. The occasion is too well known to
need more than a glance. The House of Representatives, on the eleventh
of February, had sent its famous Circular Letter to the other Colonies,
proposing, that, in the present crisis, there should be unity of action
among them. The Loyalists charged that this was an attempt to organize a
Confederacy, and therefore was revolutionary; the Patriots averred that
its sole object was to unite in petition and remonstrance for redress
of grievances, and therefore that it was constitutional; the Ministry
regarded the act as in the last degree danger