e Governor. This decision was
reached before the June meeting or the June riot; and it is quite in
vain to seek the real reason for it in what appears on paper about the
processions on the eighteenth of March or the equally insignificant
prior manifestations. Hutchinson and Gage and other Loyalists admitted
that all these were trifles. The Ministers were no strangers to mobs;
even if there had been as violent ones in Boston as there were in
London, they could not have acted upon them as proofs of disloyalty.
Besides the calumnies that made out the popular leaders to be
anarchists, that perverted love of the local government into a
desire for independence, there was one that touched the pride of the
mother-country; for the Loyalists said of the Bostonians,--(there
is nothing like the language of the time to embody the spirit of
the time,)--that "every dirty fellow, just risen from his kennel,
congratulated his neighbor on their glorious victory over England; and
they were so intoxicated with their own vast importance, that the lowest
wretch among them conceived himself superior to the first English
merchant." This was falsehood; for it is certain that the joy for
the repeal of the Stamp Act was joy for harmony restored between the
Colonies and Great Britain.

Thus, owing to such representations, while the people of Boston were
deliberating in the great town-meetings of June, orders were on their
way to General Gage, whose head-quarters were in New York, to place
troops in Castle William, to station a detachment in Boston, and to
keep a naval force in the harbor. The despatch of Lord Hillsborough,
addressed to Governor Bernard, communicating this conclusion, was
elaborate and able, and laid down in full the policy of the Government.
The instructions were based on the pretence that Boston was "in
possession of a licentious and unrestrained mob"; that it was animated
by a disposition "to resist the laws and to deny the authority of
Parliament"; and that the alleged "illegal and unwarrantable measures
which had been pursued in opposing the officers of the revenue in the
execution of their duty, and for intimidating the civil magistrates,
showed the necessity of strengthening the hands of the Government."
This despatch refers to five of Bernard's letters as containing such
representations. It is worthy of remark, that Lord Hillsborough sharply
rebuked the Governor for having all along asked the advice of the
Council as to th