Though Governor Bernard had long thought a military force necessary to sustain the new measures, yet he refused to make a requisition for it.  He expected the Government, of its own motion, would order troops to Boston in the time of the Stamp Act, and looked for trouble on their arrival.  “The crisis,” he wrote, (September 1, 1766,) “which I apprehend most danger from, is the introduction of King’s troops into this town, which, having become necessary to the support of the Government, will be placed to the account of the Governor.”  But no troops were ordered then.  He never was able to get his Council, even when he supposed a majority agreed with him in politics, to recommend their introduction; for no policy or measure which even such a Council indorsed required troops to enforce it.  The Governor, however, was a zealous advocate of the new policy of the Ministry, which he judged could not be carried out without military force; but his point was, that, along with the stiff instructions to carry that policy out, the Ministry ought to supply force enough to do it.

The new Revenue Acts provided for a Board called the Commissioners of Customs, who were empowered to collect duties along a truly imperial line of coast, extending from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico.  They were appointed to reside in Boston.  They were five in number,—­Charles Paxton, Henry Hulton, William Burch, John Robinson, and John Temple.  Not much is said of Hulton and Burch, who appear to have been simply zealous partisans; Robinson’s violent temper is seen in his savage assault on Otis; Temple was not in favor of the creation of the Board, and won its enmity by taking exceptions to its doings; Paxton was charged with being the father of the Board and its chief.  He was a zealous official, with a clean Tory record, of bland, courtlike ways, and certificated to England as Bernard’s confidential friend.  There he is said to have “whined, cried, professed, swore, and made his will in favor of that great man,” Charles Townshend, whom, when in Boston, he had supplied with funds, and thus gained his objects.  This Board soon became a severe and chronic local irritant.  The foreign ways of its members, for most of them were strangers, supplied the wits of the town with material for satire, while its main acts were as iron to the soul of a high-spirited community.  As it was created to collect taxes held to be unconstitutional, it could not have been popular; but it discharged an ungracious task in an ungracious way; and so singularly ill-judged was its action, that, while it excited odium here, it elicited censure in England.