Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/185

-1770] jyimifection in Massachusetts. 153 continued however to sit as a convention, having indeed no legal status but being equally effective, possibly for that very reason more effective, as a means of expressing and guiding popular feeling. At the same time other events took place at Boston, not important in themselves, but acting as irritants in an already morbid condition of affairs. A sloop named the Liberty, belonging to John Hancock, a leading merchant in Boston, who afterwards played a somewhat con- spicuous part in the Revolution, was seized by the Custom House officers, on the ground that her master had landed a cargo of Madeira wine, declaring and paying duty only on a portion of it. To prevent a rescue, the sloop was anchored close to a King's ship, the Romney, which was in the harbour. A riot followed in which the Custom House officers were maltreated. The select-men of the town then summoned a meeting. The meeting, with a dexterity which marked these proceedings throughout, avoided expressing direct approval of the rioters, but passed resolutions declaring that taxes had been imposed unconstitutionally and payment enforced by armed violence, and they petitioned for the removal of the man-of-war. There could hardly have been a better instance of the act of fostering a spirit of lawlessness while avoiding responsibility for any breach of law. Nor did the governor feel himself strong enough to make any attempt at bringing the rioters to justice. This was not the only open and successful defiance of authority. In July, 1768, Lord Hillsborough, alarmed by the reports which Governor Bernard sent home, ordered two regiments to be sent from Halifax to Boston. Bernard claimed the right to quarter the troops in the town. The Council, of which a majority was now hostile to the governor, declared that quartering troops on private citizens was only allowed when there was no barrack accommodation. The difficulty was got over, not by forcing the troops on the inhabitants, but by hiring quarters. The arrangement was no doubt in the interests of peace ; but there remained the fact that the authority of government had been successfully defied. As we have seen, the Assembly, though deprived of legal power, continued to sit as a convention. On the transparently false plea of a possible French invasion, the town-meeting passed a resolution requesting all inhabitants to furnish themselves with fire-arms. It is even said that Otis and others went so far as to collect a supply of arms ready for distribution. It is hardly too much to say that the town of Boston, without formally throwing off the authority of the Crown, was building up a de facto government which, for all practical purposes, superseded that which existed de jure. On the 3rd of March, 1770, took place that incident called, with somewhat grotesque magniloquence, the Boston Massacre. Various displays of ill-feeling between the townsmen and the soldiers culminated en. v.