taken to countermand the order for the troops, the following semi-official doubt appeared in the “News-Letter":—­“It is conjectured that there are troops to come here; but at present we can find no authentic accounts of it, nor that any person has declared that they actually are, though there is great probability that they will soon be here, if ever.”  This, from a Loyalist source, is a singularly worded paragraph, and is richly Delphic.

The circular letter which Boston addressed (September 14) to the towns, calling a Convention, accurately states the object of the military force that was now expected:—­“The design of these troops is, in every one’s apprehension, nothing short of enforcing by military power the execution of Acts of Parliament, in the forming of which the Colonies have not, and cannot have, any constitutional influence.  This is one of the greatest distresses to which a free people can be reduced.”  The object of the Convention is as accurately stated to be, “to prevent any sudden and unconnected measures,” and to act in every constitutional way for the preservation of invaluable rights.  The Governor, as usual, acting on his theory of insurrection, held that the Convention was designed to mature plans for it; and he wrote (September l6) to Lord Hillsborough as to his own plans,—­“For my own part, if I had any place of protection to resort to, I would publish a proclamation against the assembling of the Convention, but I dare not take so spirited a step without first securing my retreat”; and, with unusual good sense, he expressed “much doubt whether the force already ordered by General Gage, namely, two regiments, would be sufficient” to fight off the original charter, and to keep the crown officers in their places.  There was a small party who were in favor of resuming the old charter; but the union of the towns of Massachusetts, and then the union of all the Colonies, for the sake of continued union with Great Britain, was the key of the action of the leaders who were the exponents of the Patriots.  They did not contemplate going into acts of government; and neither now nor in the future did they ever contemplate “sudden and unconnected measures.”

Three days later (September 19) Governor Bernard threw off all disguise.  He formally announced to the Council that troops were coming, and asked this body to provide them quarters.  And now began a long, irritating, and arrogant endeavor on the part of the Executive to browbeat the local authorities in the matter of providing quarters for the troops.  The official record is voluminous.  The Patriots kept strictly to the law, and won a moral victory:  the royal officials persisted in virtually urging burly British will as law, and suffered the shame of an ignominious defeat.  The Governor thought the Government had received a blow that made it reel; and, in a garrulous, complaining letter, supplies not only a vivid idea of the whole of this struggle, but an idea of his well-deserved individual mortification.