This completes the list of towns that gave instructions to their representatives, as far as the record goes.  But there doubtless were others; as the towns were close together, and as the “spirit of liberty was rife in the land.”

The Negroes did not endure the yoke without complaint.  Having waited long and patiently for the dawn of freedom in the colony in vain, a spirit of unrest seized them.  They grew sullen and desperate.  The local government started, like a sick man, at every imaginary sound, and charged all disorders to the Negroes.  If a fire broke out, the “Negroes did it,”—­in fact, the Negroes, who were not one-sixth of the population, were continually committing depreciations against the whites!  On the 13th of April, 1723, Lieut.-Gov.  Dummer issued a proclamation against the Negroes, which contained the following preamble:—­

“Whereas, within some short time past, many fires have broke out within the town of Boston, and divers buildings have thereby been consumed:  which fires have been designedly and industriously kindled by some villanous and desperate negroes, or other dissolute people, as appears by the confession of some of them (who have been examined by the authority), and many concurring circumstances; and it being vehemently suspected that they have entered into a combination to burn and destroy the town, I have therefore thought fit, with the advice of his Majesty’s council, to issue forth this proclamation,” etc.

On Sunday, the 18th of April, 1723, the Rev. Joseph Sewall preached a sermon suggested “by the late fires y’t have broke out in Boston, supposed to be purposely set by y’e negroes.”  The town was greatly exercised.  Everybody regarded the Negroes with distrust.  Special measures were demanded to insure the safety of the town.  The selectmen of Boston passed “nineteen articles” for the regulation of the Negroes.  The watch of the town was increased, and the military called out at the sound of every fire-alarm “to keep the slaves from breaking out”!  In August, 1730, a Negro was charged with burning a house in Malden; which threw the entire community into a panic.  In 1755 two Negro slaves were put to death for poisoning their master, John Codman of Charlestown.  One was hanged, and the other burned to death.  In 1766 all slaves who showed any disposition to be free were “transported and exchanged for small negroes."[390] In 1768 Capt.  John Willson, of the Fifty-ninth Regiment, was accused of exciting the slaves against their masters; assuring them that the soldiers had come to procure their freedom, and that, “with their assistance, they should be able to drive the Liberty Boys to the Devil.”  The following letter from Mrs. John Adams to her husband, dated at the Boston Garrison, 22d September, 1774, gives a fair idea of the condition of the public pulse, and her pronounced views against slavery.