The people wore indignant at the introduction of the troops, and the crown officials were arrogant and goading; but so wise and forbearing were the popular leaders, that, for ten months, from October, 1768, to August, 1769, no detriment came to their cause from the madness of mobs or the insolence of soldiers.  The Loyalists, in this public order, saw the wholesome terror with which military force had imbued the community; they said this “had prevented, if it had not put a final period to, its most pestilential town-meetings”:  but they termed this quiet “only a truce procured from the dread of the bayonet”; and they held that nothing would reach and suppress the rising spirit of independence but a radical stroke at the democratic element in the local Constitution.  They relied on physical force to carry out such a policy, and hence they looked on the demand of the people for a withdrawal of the troops as equivalent to a demand for the abandonment of their policy and the abdication of the Government.  The partial removal already made caused great chagrin.  The report, at first, was hardly credited in British political circles, and, when confirmed, was construed into inability, inconsistency, and concession by the Administration, and a sign that things were growing worse in America.

General Gage had withdrawn the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, the detachment of the Fifty-Ninth, and the company of artillery, which left the Fourteenth Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple and the Twenty-Ninth under Lieutenant-Colonel Carr,—­the two regiments which Lord North termed “the Sam Adams Regiments,”—­not enough, if the Ministers intended to govern by military force, and too many, if they did not intend this.  They continued under General Mackay until he left for England, when the command devolved on Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple, the senior officer, under whom they had landed, who was exacting, severe in his judgment on the Patriots, and impatient of professional service.  Commodore Hood and his family also sailed for Halifax.  Both Mackay and Hood, aiming at reconciliation, and liberal in non-essentials, easily won the general good-will.  The disuse of the press-gang, which even “Junius” was now justifying, and which England had not learned to abominate, but which rowelled the differently trained mind of the Colonies, was regarded as a great concession to personal liberty; and the discontinuance of parades and horse-racing on Sundays was accepted as a concession to a religious sentiment that was very general, and which, so far from deserving the sneer of being hypocritical, indicated the wide growth of respect for things noble and divine.  These officers seemed, at least, to steer clear of political matters, to keep to the line of their profession, and to make the best of an irksome duty.  They lived on good terms with the popular leaders, were invited to visit the common-schools with the Selectmen, appeared at the public festivals,