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

[370] demanded of him, ‘place the command of the Castle

CHAP. XLV.} 1770. Sept.

in the Governor?’ After a secret discussion which lasted for two hours, till Dalrymple had had time to take possession, he entered his carriage which was waiting at the door, hurried to the Neck, stole into a barge, and was rowed to the Castle. The officers and garrison were discharged without a moment's warning; Hutchinson delivered up the keys to Dalrymple, and in the twilight retired to his country house at Milton.¹ But he was so haunted by fear as to dread being waylaid; and the next day, as he and Bernard had done five years before, he fled for safety to the Castle, where he remained every night for the rest of the week. His fears were groundless. The people of Boston, especially Samuel Adams, were indignant at the breach of their Charter; the act was a commencement of civil war. Yet the last appeal was not to be made without some prospect of success, and the Castle remained in the possession of England for five and a half years.

A fleet in the harbor of Boston, a fort garrisoned and commanded by the regular troops and threatening it at any moment with a total loss of its commerce, were the invention of the Ministry to coerce the town into unresisting obedience. Distrust, injury, and menace were the chosen medicines against rebellion. ‘As a citizen of the world,’ cried Turgot, ‘I see with joy the approach of an event which more than all the books of the philosophers, will dissipate the puerile and sanguinary phantom of a pretended exclusive commerce. I speak of the separation of the British Colonies from their metropolis, ’