Patriot, who declined to let the troops occupy it; whereupon he applied to the Selectmen for Faneuil Hall, promising that the utmost care should be taken not to injure the property.  “About twilight,” in the words of the “Gazette,” “the Fourteenth Regiment marched down to the Hall, where they stood under arms till near nine o’clock, when the door, by some means or other, being opened, they took up their lodgings there that night.”  The Colonel exultingly wrote,—­“By tolerable management I got possession of Faneuil Hall, the School of Liberty, from the Sons thereof, without force, and thereby secured all their arms”:  about four hundred had been recently placed there to be cleaned.

Such was the day, so long looked forward to, of the landing of the King’s troops.  The people were indignant, but were silent and preserved their self-respect; but the object of the popular leaders had been accomplished, so far as the reception of the military force was concerned.  A candid British observer, who was in Boston, saw the truth and printed it in England:—­“The Patriot leaders of the Opposition were much more concerned at any mobs that happened than the Government people.  These last seem pleased with them, as countenancing their representations,—­the necessity of sending soldiers to keep them in order.”  On this occasion, in the words of the “Gazette,” “Not the least attempt was made or contemplated to oppose the landing of the King’s troops or their encampment on the Common.”  There is no mention made of even hisses or groans, as the colors that symbolized arbitrary power were proudly borne up King Street.  The peace and good order that marked the day much chagrined the Loyalists, and fairly astonished “the gentlemen of the military.”

These gentlemen might have read in the next issues of the journals the temper of the public mind, in the comments freely made on their mission and on the events that were said to have occasioned their presence.  The pretext, the obnoxious proceedings of the eighteenth of March, was characterized as the trifling hallooing of a harmless procession; the mob of the tenth of June was more serious, but was soon over; but on the all-important and vital point of allegiance, they might have seen expressed, in the weighty words of the Council, infinite regret at the reflection which that show of force implied on the loyalty of the people to their sovereign, who had not in his wide-extended dominions any more faithful subjects than in the town of Boston.  And what really was the offence of the Patriots?  They had resolved, they had petitioned, they had agreed not to import or to buy British goods.  But they were not law-breakers, for they could triumphantly challenge their opponents to produce a single instance since the tenth of June of an interruption of the public peace or of resistance to law; and they were not political heretics, for the principles of colonial administration which they stood on were such as their