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[375] terms, but were restrained by a menace of dismissal
chap XX.} 1765. Dec.
from office.

In Boston, this question was agitated with determined zeal; but first the people dealt with Andrew Oliver, who had received his commission as stampman. On the very day, and almost at the hour when the King was proceeding in state to the House of Lords to open parliament, the ‘true-born Sons of Liberty,’ deaf to all entreaties, placed Oliver at the head of a long procession, with Mackintosh, a leader in the August riots, at his side, and with great numbers following, on the cold wet morning, escorted him to Liberty Tree, to stand in the rain under the very bough on which he had swung in effigy. There, in the presence of two thousand men, he declared in a written paper, to which he publicly set his name, that he would never directly or indirectly take any measures to enforce the Stamp Act, and with the whole multitude for witnesses, he, upon absolute requisition, made oath to this pledge before Richard Dana, a justice of the peace. At this, the crowd gave three cheers; and when Oliver, who was the third officer in the province, with bitterest revenge in his heart, spoke to them with a smile, they gave three cheers more.1

On the evening of the next day, as John Adams sat ruminating in his humble mansion at Quincy, on the interruption of his career as a lawyer, a message came, that Boston, at the instance of a committee of which Samuel Adams was the chief, had joined him with Gridley and Otis, to sustain their memorial to the Governor and Council for opening the courts; and

1 A. Oliver to Bernard, 17 Dec. Same to same, 19 Dec. Boston Gaz. J. Adams's Diary.

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