There was really no ground for all this alarm.  The popular leaders, from the excited state of the public mind, might have been apprehensive of an explosion from the rash, which they meant, if possible, to prevent, and if it came, to repress; but the Loyalist leaders would have it that there was a deep-laid plot even for a revolution.  “It is now known,” is Governor Bernard’s malicious misrepresentation, as he reviewed these scenes and justified the introduction of the troops, “that the plan was to seize the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor and take possession of the treasury, and then set up their standard.”  He said that five hundred men had been enrolled to take the Castle, and it was likely that the names, at least of the chief of them, would be discovered.  There is no such list in thirteen folio volumes of his correspondence.  Hutchinson’s misrepresentation was as mischievous, but more cautious; for he assured his British correspondents that at the time when the troops landed in Boston the Province was on the brink of ruin, and that their arrival prevented the most extravagant measures,—­though, he said, he did not certainly know what the dark designs of the heads of the opposition were.

On the morning of the town-meeting, (September 12,) Governor Bernard believed that the popular leaders were resolved not merely to capture the crown officials, but to resume the first charter, which, he said, had not a single ingredient of royalty in it.  But while he was looking for insurrection, a committee of the highest respectability waited on him, and asked him to be pleased to communicate to the town the grounds and assurances on which he had intimated his apprehensions that one or more regiments might he daily expected.  On the next day the Governor replied in writing,—­“My apprehensions that some of his Majesty’s troops are to be expected in Boston arise from information of a private nature; I have received no public letters notifying to me the coming of such troops.”  The information came by letter from the only official in the country who could order troops into Boston, and yet he said it was private; according to this letter, he must have decided on the number of troops that were to come, and yet he prattled about apprehensions.  Such was the way in which a royal Governor of the Stuart school dealt with a people filled with patriotic concern for their country.  It is the dealing of a small man.  If he can escape the charge of deliberate falsehood, it is only, on demurrer, by the plea of a contemptible quibble.

It is not necessary here to follow the noble popular demonstrations that rounded off by a delegate convention, which, at the simple request of Boston, assembled in Faneuil Hall.  The officials, who had long played falsely with a liberty-loving, yet loyal people, now fairly quailed before the whirlwind of their righteous indignation.  Two days after Bernard had “intimated his apprehensions,” as though steps had been