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

‘ [161] but throughout the province.’¹ On the fifteenth of

Chap XXXIV} 1768. June.

June, the Commissioners of the Customs wrote to Gage and to Hood, demanding further protection; for, said they, ‘the leaders of the people of Boston will urge them to open revolt.’²

To the Lords of ,the Treasury they reported ‘a long concerted and extensive plan of resistance to the authority of Great Britain,’ breaking out in ‘acts of violence sooner than was intended;’ and they gave their opinion ‘that nothing but the immediate exertion of military power would prevent an open revolt of the town of Boston, and probably of the Provinces.’³

‘If there is not a revolt,’ wrote Bernard to Hillsborough, ‘the leaders of the Sons of Liberty must falsify their words and change their purposes.’⁴ Hutchinson sounded the alarm to his various correspondents, especially to Whately,⁵ to whom Paxton also sent word, that ‘unless they should have immediately two or three regiments, it was the opinion of all the friends to government, that Boston would be in open rebellion.’⁶ To interpret and enforce the correspondence, Hallowell, the comptroller, was despatched as their emissary to London.⁷

To bring troops into Boston, was the surest way of hastening an insurrection; the letters, soliciting them, may have been kept secret, but the town