and their town-meetings, their highways and their homes; and always looked upon the Crown as the symbol of a national power that would shield their precious body of customs and rights.  Thus what the Governor said on the paramount point of nationality met with an honest response from those to whom it was addressed.  “I am myself,” he wrote, (June 18,) “on better terms with the people than usual.  A civil treatment of a petition of the town to me, a plain and friendly answer thereto, and some real service by interposing with the men-of-war, have given me a little popularity.  But it won’t last a week.  As soon as I have executed the orders I have just received from the Secretary of State, in the General Assembly, there will be an end of my popularity; and I don’t know whether I sha’n’t be obliged to act like the captain of a fire-ship,—­provide for my retreat before I light my fusee.”

But he quietly lighted his fusee, when the horizon became all aglow with what to the Loyalists was the lurid flame of destruction, but to the Patriots was as light from heaven.  The occasion is too well known to need more than a glance.  The House of Representatives, on the eleventh of February, had sent its famous Circular Letter to the other Colonies, proposing, that, in the present crisis, there should be unity of action among them.  The Loyalists charged that this was an attempt to organize a Confederacy, and therefore was revolutionary; the Patriots averred that its sole object was to unite in petition and remonstrance for redress of grievances, and therefore that it was constitutional; the Ministry regarded the act as in the last degree dangerous to the prerogative, and ordered Governor Bernard to demand of the House to recall or rescind this Circular Letter.  The communication of this order was what the Governor called lighting his fusee.  His daily letters show precisely his state of mind as he touched it off.  He saw a determination to resist Great Britain; he was told that the people were making preparations to do it; and he wrote to his relative, Viscount Barrington, who had the entree of the royal closet,—­sending the letter by Hallowell,—­with rather more than the usual emphasis of error,—­“I am sure that things are coming apace to a crisis, and I fear the Bostonians will get the start of you.”  In this mood the Governor sent in the arrogant British demand.  The House, (June 26, 1768,) by the memorable vote of ninety-two to seventeen, flatly refused to comply with the royal order; whereupon the Governor, as the punishment, dissolved the General Court; and for many months Massachusetts was without a legislature.