The Commissioners were full believers in the theory that the popular leaders designed insurrection.  The Governor, in a letter to Lord Barrington, (March 8, 1768,) relates that they would ask him what support he could give them, “if there should be insurrection.”  “I answer,” Bernard says, “‘None at all.’  They then desire me to apply to the General for troops.  I tell them I cannot do it; for I am directed to consult the Council about requiring troops, and they will never advise it, let the case be ever so desperate.  Indeed, I no more dare apply for troops than the Council dare advise me to it.  Ever since I have perceived that the wickedness of some and the folly of others will in the end bring troops here, I have conducted myself so as to be able to say, and swear to it, if the Sons of Liberty shall require it, that I have never applied for troops; and therefore, my Lord, I beg that nothing I now write may be considered such an application.”  This is a fair show for this royal official.  He begins his letter by telling how, within ten days just passed, nights have been twice fixed upon for a mob; at the close, he returns to the matter of a mob, and tells how he has promised the Commissioners an asylum at the Castle in case of a mob; and he warns his superior that a mob, unchecked, “might put the Commissioners and all their officers on board ship, and send them back to England.”  This was the Governor’s method of not asking for troops.  The Commissioners, at least, asked for troops in a manly way.  “About a fortnight ago,” Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson writes, (March 23, 1768,) “I was in consultation with the Commissioners.  They were very desirous the Governor should——­for a R——.  If he had done it, by some means or other it would have transpired, and there is no saying to what lengths the people would have gone in their resentment.”  The letter just cited explains why the Governor did not send for a regiment.

A few days after this consultation the Patriots celebrated the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act by a day of general rejoicing.  There were things that could be perverted, and were perverted, into signs of mob-rule and disloyalty.  Daylight revealed hanging on the Liberty Tree effigies of Commissioner Paxton and Inspector Williams, the latter of whom, being a cabinet-maker, had a glue-pot by his side, but by order of the popular leaders they were soon removed; there were salutes, liberty toasts, and other joyful demonstrations, and in the evening a procession, which was quite harmless, though, as it went along the street by the Province House, somewhat noisy, so that the Governor said that he and his family were disturbed.  But there was an allegation that ran deeper than processions, and which went to the meaning of these rejoicings.  The Loyalists said that the Patriots congratulated one another on their glorious victory over England in the repeal of the Stamp Act; and if the Tory relations may be believed, there were men in Boston who were so foolish as to say,—­We have shown our spirit; we have convinced them of our resentment; they repealed their foolish act; they durst not do otherwise; if they had, we should have ruined them.  And the Loyalists said, that, when the mother-country had a right to look for gratitude, she actually met with insult.