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

[493] rage against him; and talked of his dismissal from

Chap. LI.} 1774. Jan.

office, of his arrest,¹ and imprisonment at Newgate; of a search among his papers for proofs of Treason; while Wedderburn openly professed the intention to inveigh personally against him. He was also harassed with a subpoena from the Chancellor, to attend his Court at the suit of William Whately, respecting the letters.

The public sentiment was, moreover, embittered by accounts that the Americans would not suffer the landing of the tea. The zeal of the Colonists was unabated. On New-Year's eve, a half chest of tea, picked up in Roxbury, was burned on Boston Common; on the twentieth, three barrels of Bohea tea were burned in State Street. On the twenty-fifth John Malcolm, a North Briton, who had been aid to Governor Tryon in his war against the Regulators, and was now a preventive officer in the Customs, having indiscreetly provoked the populace, was seized, tarred and feathered, and paraded under the gallows.

The General Court also assembled, full of a determination to compel the Judges to refuse the salaries proffered by the King. Enough of the prevalence of this spirit was known in England, to raise a greater clamor against the Americans, than had ever before existed. Hypocrites, traitors, rebels and villains were the softest epithets applied to them;² and some menaced war, and would have given full scope to sanguinary rancor. On the twenty-seventh, the