tch
of despatches, under cover to him, addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel
Dalrymple, the senior British officer in command at that station. On
forwarding these despatches, Bernard wrote to Dalrymple,--"You know that
my situation requires that I should appear to know as little in the
proceedings of this kind as can well be. I should, therefore, be obliged
to you, if in conducting a business of this kind you would let me appear
a stranger to it until it becomes necessary to communicate it to me
officially. In the mean time any private hints, conveyed to me by a safe
hand, will be acceptable."

A straightforward British officer must have conceived contempt for such
an official, even before subsequent action on the part of this official
elicited an expression of it.

The Governor was doomed to disappointment. The orders which he
transmitted merely placed troops in readiness to proceed to Boston on
his requisition, which requisition he steadily refused to make, and he
wrote,--"The crisis awaits the arrival of the troops, and I now learn
they are not coming." He next officially laid the tender of the
Commanding General before the Council, when he found that its members
were unanimously of the opinion that troops were not required. Now this
body contained decided Loyalists; and this unanimity of opinion appears
to have amazed the Governor. He advised Lord Barrington, that the fact
convinced him that he could "no longer depend upon the Council for the
support of the small remains of royal and parliamentary power now
left, the whole of which had been gradually impeached, arraigned, and
condemned under his eye"; which was arrant party-misrepresentation. He
further expressed the opinion that the sending of troops to Boston ought
to be a business of quartering and cantonment. "It is no secret," he
said, "that this ought to have been done two years and a half ago. If it
had, there would have been no opposition to Parliament now, and above
all, no such combinations as threaten (but I hope vainly) the overthrow
of the British Empire. If provision was to have been made against
faction and sedition, the head-quarters should have been secured."
Instead of this, "Boston has been left under a trained mob from August
14, 1765, to this present July 23, 1768."

While these things had been going on here, the die as to Massachusetts
and Boston had been cast in the British cabinet, by the conclusion to
place a military force at the command of th