luxuriating in the emotions of hope and faith, yearning for the right, mastering the reasoning on which it was based, were steadily taking their fit place on the national stage, in the belief of the nearness of a mighty historic hour.  And their spontaneous praise was for a community heroically acting on national principles and for a national cause.  Because of this did they predict that unborn millions would hold up the men of Boston as worthy to be enrolled in the shining record of Fame.

As the new year (1770) came in, the people were looking forward to a meeting of the General Court, always a season of peculiar interest, and more so now than ever, for it was certain that the debates in this body would turn on the foremost local subject, the removal of the troops.  But the subject was no longer merely local, for it had become a general issue, one affecting not only Boston and Massachusetts, but other towns and Colonies, and the interest felt in the controversy was wide and deep.  “In this day of constitutional light,” a New-York essay copied into a Boston newspaper runs, “it is monstrous that troops should be kept, not to protect the right, but to enslave the continent.”  While it was thus put by the journals, the policy was meant to be of this significance by the Ministry; and the letters printed for the first time in this monograph attest the accuracy of the Patriot judgment.  On purely local grounds, also, the presence of the troops continued to be deplored.  “The troops,” Dr. Cooper wrote, January 1, 1770, “greatly corrupt our morals, and are in every sense an oppression.  May Heaven soon deliver us from this great evil!” Samuel Adams said, “The troops must move to the Castle; it must be the first business of the General Court to move them out of town”; and James Otis said.  “The Governor has the power to move them under the Constitution.”  Hutchinson endeavored to conciliate the people by making arrangements with General Gage for a removal of the main guard from its location near the Town-House, being informed that this might satisfy the greater part of the members.

Having taken this precaution, Hutchinson was really anxious for a meeting of the General Court.  He was in great uncertainty both as to public and private affairs.  He knew now that Bernard was not to return, but he did not know who was to be the successor; he conjectured that it might be “that the government was to be put on a new establishment, and a person of rank appointed Governor”; and he confessed that he was “ignorant of the Ministerial plan” as to the Colonies.  The Legislature was appointed to convene on the tenth of January.  But the November packet from England, happening to make an uncommonly short passage, brought him a peremptory order, which he received on the evening of the third of January, to prorogue the time of the sitting of the General Court; and the journals of the next morning contain his Proclamation, setting forth that “by His Majesty’s command” the Legislature was