A few days after this the Lieutenant-Governor was obliged to deal with a mob, which grew out of the meanness of importers, whose selfish course proved to be a great strain on the forbearing policy of the popular leaders.  The merchants on the Tory side, among whom were two of Hutchinson’s sons, persisted in importing goods; and he writes, with a good deal of pride, as though it were meritorious, that since the agreement was formed these two sons had imported two hundred chests of tea, which they had been so clever as to sell.  But such was the public indignation at this course, that they, too, were compelled to give in to the non-importation agreement; and Hutchinson’s letters are now severer than ever on the Patriots.  He characterizes “the confederacy of merchants” as a very high offence, and the Sons of Liberty as the greatest tyrants ever known.  But as he continually predicted a crisis, he said, “I can find nobody to join with me in an attempt to discourage them.”  He adds, “If any tumults should happen, I shall be under less difficulty than if my own children had been the pretended occasion of them; and for this reason Dalrymple tells me he is very glad they have done as they have.”  The immediate occasion of the mob was the dealing of the people with an informer on the twenty-eighth of October.  They got track of him about noon, and, after a long search, found him towards evening, when they immediately prepared to tar and feather him.  It was quite dark.  A formidable procession carted the culprit from one quarter of the town to another, and threatened to break the windows of all houses which were without lights.  The Lieutenant-Governor summoned such of the members of the Council as were at hand, and the justices of the county, to meet him at the Council-Chamber; he requested Dalrymple to order the force under his command “to be ready to march when the occasion required”; and he “kept persons employed to give him immediate notice of every new motion of the mob.”  Dalrymple, with a soldier’s alacrity, complied with the official request; but the mob went on its course, for “none of the justices nor the sheriff,” writes Hutchinson, “thought it safe for them to restrain so great a body of people in a dark evening,”—­and the only work done by the soldiers was to protect Mien, the printer, who, being goaded into discharging a pistol among the crowd, fled to the main guard for safety.  The finale of this mob is thus related by Hutchinson:—­“Between eight and nine o’clock they dispersed of their own account, and the town was quiet.”

The intrepid and yet prudent course of the popular leaders and of the people, in standing manfully for the common cause in presence of the British troops, was now eliciting the warmest encomiums on the town from the friends of liberty in England and in the Colonies.  The generous praise was copied into the local journals, and, so far from being received with assumption, became a powerful incentive to worthy