Chap. XXXII.} 1768. March |
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on Liberty Tree; they were instantly taken
down by the friends of the people.
The Governor endeavored to magnify ‘the atrociousness of the insult,’ and to express fears of violence; the Council justly insisted there was no danger of disturbance.
The day was celebrated1 by a temperate festival, at which toasts were drunk to the Freedom of the Press, to Paoli and the Corsicans, to the joint freedom of America and Ireland; to the immortal memory of Brutus, Cassius, Hampden and Sidney.
Those who dined together broke up early.
There was no bonfire lighted, and ‘in the evening,’ these are Hutchinson's2 words, written within the week of the event, ‘we had only such a mob as we have long been used to on the Fifth of November, and other holidays.’
Gage3 too, who afterwards made careful inquiry in Boston, declared the disturbance to have been ‘trifling.’
But Bernard reported a ‘great disposition to the utmost disorder; hundreds parading the streets with yells and outcries that were quite terrible.’
As the mob passed his house, ‘there was so terrible a yell that it was apprehended they were breaking in. It was not so; however, it caused the same terror as if it had been so.’—‘The whole made it a very terrible night to those who thought themselves objects of the popular fury.’
And this was said of a mere usual gathering of men, women, and children at a time of rejoicing, when no harm was done or intended.
‘I can afford no protection ’
1 Boston Gazette of 21 March, 1768; 677, 3, 1.
2 Hutchinson to Richard Jackson, 23 March, 1768.
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