that favorite weapon of tyrants, had been quartered upon
the people to enforce their obedience to a system which the
most illustrious statesmen of England had viewed with grief
and horror, and had denounced as unjust with all the force
of eloquence and reasoning. A more righteous cause never
animated human breast than theirs. They demanded sim-
ply the privileges belonging to all other subjects of Great
Britain, -- privileges which no one pretended to deny to such
as resided in England. It was little to ask, but it involved
their liberties and those of their posterity forever. Those
great intellects in the British Parliament, whose sagacious
minds reached far into the future, saw and knew the justice
of the demand; and the most magnificent bursts of Parlia-
mentary eloquence which adorn the pages of English history
are those arising from the generous advocacy of American
rights.

We must thus look back from the point we have reached
in order properly to estimate the position of the people of
Boston at this juncture. They had right on their side, and
their opposition was always carefully kept within the limits
of the law. Not one act had been committed that could af-
ford their enemies the slightest hold upon them. Read any
account, and when sifted to the truth, it will appear that
nothing was done hastily, nor was any measure accomplished
which Britons should not have felt proud of, as evincing a
spirit and loyalty combined honorable to their race. To
have tamely submitted without remonstrance to the insane
policy inaugurated by Grenville would have been to give
the lie to their ancestry, and to put to shame the efforts of
their great advocates in Parliament. Exasperated by the
presence of the soldiers, whose bloodthirsty desires were
well known, and sensible that all conciliatory means had
been exhausted, the people of Boston cannot be blamed for
viewing the troops as foreign enemies; and when we con-
sider the aggravating events of the past two years, it is a
matter of surprise that bloody meetings did not occur shortly
after the arrival of the military.

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