Bostonians was a compound of the grossest
injury and insult. It was an act of the highest insolence towards
government, such as mildness itself cannot overlook or forgive. The
injustice of the deed was also most atrocious, as it was the destruction
of property to a vast amount, when it was known that the nation was
obliged in honor to protect it."

We subjoin some of the comments of candid British writers respecting the
affair. Mr. Massey says: "The question of taxation was virtually settled
by this signal failure to enforce the law, or rather by the absence of
any attempt to protect the property of merchants who had made their
ventures by the express authority, if not at the instance of the British
government."

While speaking of the destruction of the tea as the "crowning outrage,"
Lecky says, "It will probably strike the reader that every argument
which shewed that the tea duty was not a grievance, was equally powerful
to show that it was perfectly useless as a means of obtaining a revenue.
It would be difficult indeed to find a more curious instance of
legislative incapacity than the whole transaction displayed."

Hear Carlyle:

"Thursday, December 16, 1773. What a contention is going on
far over seas at Boston, New England. The case is well known
and still memorable to mankind. British parliament, after
nine years of the saddest haggling, and baffling to and fro
under constitutional stress of weather, and such east winds
and west winds of parliamentary eloquence as seldom were,
has made up its mind that America shall pay duty on their
teas before infusing them, and America, Boston more
especially, is tacitly determined that it will not, and that
to avoid mistakes the teas shall never be landed at all....

"Rotch's report done, the chairman (an Adams 'American
Cato,' subsequently so called,) dissolves the sorrowful
seven thousand, with these words, 'The meeting declares it
can do nothing more to save the country," we'll naturally go
home then and weep. Hark however! almost on the instant, in
front of the Old South Meeting House, a terrific war-whoop,
and about fifty Mohawk Indians, with whom Adams seems to be
acquainted, and speaks without interpreter: Aha!

"And sure enough, before the stroke of seven these fifty
painted Mohawks are forward without noise to Griffin's
wharf, have put sentries all round them, and in a great