Two days after the Governor received the letter of General Gage, a communication appeared in the “Boston Gazette,” under the head of “READER!  ATTEND!” which arraigned, with uncommon spirit and boldness, the course of the officials who were urging the policy of arbitrary power, as having a direct tendency “to dissolve the union between Great Britain and her colonies.”  It proposed to remonstrate against this policy to the King, and at the same time to declare that “there was nothing this side eternity they dreaded more than being broken off from his government.”  In urging resistance to this course the author said,—­“We will put our lives in our hands, and cry to the Judge of all the Earth, who will do right.”

This paper, like many similar appeals in that well-stored Liberty arsenal, the “Boston Gazette,” had the genuine Liberty ring, yet there was in it nothing very unusual; but the royal circle at the Province House lived in an unusual atmosphere, and this article came sounding in among them like a great moral Dahlgren.  “In the Boston Gazette of the fifth instant,” the Governor, with his usual acuteness, wrote to the Secretary of State, “appeared a paper containing a system of politics exceeding all former exceedings.  Some took it for the casual ravings of an occasional enthusiast.  But I persuaded myself that it came out of the cabinet of the faction, and was preparatory to some actual operations against the Government.  In this persuasion, I considered, that, if the troops from Halifax were to come here on a sudden, there would be no avoiding an insurrection, which would at least fall upon the crown officers, if it did not amount to an opposition to the troops.  I therefore thought it would be best that the expectation of the troops should be gradually communicated, that the heads of the faction might have time to consider well what they were about, and prudent men opportunity to interpose their advice.”  Accordingly (September 8) he “took an occasion to mention to one of the Council, in the way of discourse, that he had private advice that troops were ordered to Boston, but had no public orders about it”; and before night, the Governor adds, the intelligence was all over the town.

Before night, too, a petition, addressed to the Selectmen, was circulating all over the town, and large numbers were affixing their names to it.  It prayed that the town might be legally convened to require of the Governor the reasons for his declaration that three regiments might be daily expected, and “to consider of the most wise, consistent, and salutary measure suitable to meet the occasion.”  The Selectmen acted promptly, (John Hancock was on the Board,) and summoned the citizens to meet on the Monday following.  In this way, openly before men, not covertly like a body of conspirators, did the solid men and prudent men of Boston prepare for council.