hing in this should be considered
underhanded, a copy of the circular letter was sent to England.

It is significant that at the same time the new revenue commission sent
a secret letter to England, protesting against New England town
meetings, "in which the lowest mechanics discussed the most important
points of government with the utmost freedom,"[20] and asking for
troops.

This begins the series of misrepresentations and complaints which,
constantly sent secretly to England, became a leading cause of trouble.
The working of the old colonial system is here seen in its perfection.
Believing in the right to tax and punish, the Ministry appointed
officers of the same belief. These men, finding themselves in hot water
in Boston, were annoyed and perhaps truly alarmed, and constantly urged
harsher measures and the sending of troops. The ministry, listening to
its own supporters, and disbelieving the assertions of the American
Whigs, more and more steadily inclined toward severity.

Perhaps no falser idea was created than that Boston was riotous. Says
Fiske: "Of all the misconceptions of America by England which brought
about the American Revolution, perhaps this notion of the turbulence of
Boston was the most ludicrous." One of the most serious also. The chief
cause was in the timorousness of Bernard, the governor. On the occasion
of the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, when, as Hutchinson
said, "We had only such a mob as we have long been used to on the Fifth
of November," Bernard wrote that there was "a disposition to the utmost
disorder." As a crowd reached his house, "There was so terrible a yell
it was apprehended they were breaking in. It was not so; however, it
caused the same terror as if it had been so." That such a letter should
have any effect on home opinion is, as Fiske says, ludicrous. Yet the
mischief caused by these reports is incalculable. "It is the bare
truth," says Trevelyan, "that his own Governors and
Lieutenant-Governors wrote King George out of America."[21]

Another little series of incidents at this time shows the official
disposition to magnify reports of trouble. For some weeks the ship of
war _Romney_ had lain in the harbor, summoned by the commissioners of
customs. That the ship should be summoned was in itself an offence to
the town; but the conduct of the captain, in impressing seamen in the
streets of Boston, was worse. Bad blood arose between the ship's crew
and the longsho