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

[330] Hutchinsons.¹ None of them were allowed to enter;

Chap. XLIII.} 1770. Jan.

the Lieutenant Governor himself threw up a window and pretended to charge them with a tumultuous and menacing application to him as Chief Magistrate. ‘We come,’ they answered, ‘to treat with your sons, who have dishonorably violated their own contract, to which they had pledged their honor.’ ‘A contract,’ answered Hutchinson from the window, ‘without a valuable consideration is not valid in law.’ But he remained in great perplexity, fearing loss of property by riot. Early the next morning, he sent for the upright William Phillips, the moderator of the meeting, and engaged for his sons, that a sum of money should be deposited in the room of the tea that had been sold, and that the rest should be returned. The capitulation was immediately reported to the meeting and accepted.²

‘This,’ said Bernard's friends, ‘was as good a time as any to have called out the troops;’ and they thought it best to bring matters ‘to extremities.’³ Dalrymple was ready; and ordered his men to equip themselves with twelve rounds for an attack.⁴ ‘He has now thrown down the reins into the hands of the people,’ cried the Customs' Commissioners of Hutchinson, ‘and he can never recover them.’⁵ ‘I am a ruined man,’ said he despondingly to Phillips. ‘I humbly hope,’ thus he wrote to those who dealt out offices in London, ‘that a single error in judgment ’