George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

‘ [437] of the odium these might be attended with, call-

Chap. XLVIII.} 1772. Dec.

ing for troops to protect and secure the enjoyment of them; when I see them exciting jealousies in the Crown, and provoking it to wrath against so great a part of its most faithful subjects; creating enmities between the different countries of which the empire consists; occasioning a great expense to the old country, for suppressing or preventing imaginary rebellions in the new, and to the new country for the payment of needless gratifications to useless officers and enemies; I cannot but doubt their sincerity even in the political principles they profess, and deem them mere time-servers, seeking their own private emoluments, through any quantity of public mischief; betrayers of the interest not of their native country only, but of the Government they pretend to serve, and of the whole English empire.’¹

While the letters were on their way, the towns in the Province were just coming together under the impulse from Boston. The people of Marblehead, whose fishermen were all returned from their annual summer's excursion to the Grand Banks, at a full meeting, with but one dissentient, expressed ‘their unavoidable disesteem and reluctant irreverence for the British Parliament;’ their sense of the ‘great and uncommon kind of grievance,’ of being compelled ‘to carry the produce of Spain and Portugal, received for their fish, to Great Britain, and there paying duties;’ how ‘justly they were incensed at the unconstitutional, unrighteous proceedings’ of Ministers, how they ‘detested ’