Provinces to a necessary combination for their mutual inter-
est and defence. Some future congress will be the glorious
source of the salvation of America! The Amphictyons of
Greece, who formed the diet or great council of the states,
exhibit an excellent model for the rising Americans." ¹ The crowded auditory drank in the words, and were thus
familiarized with an idea, which in another year was to be
carried into effect. Samuel Adams, as usual, sent the
printed oration to his friends, scattering the seeds of liberty
in England as well as in the other Colonies.

A few days after the adjournment of the Legislature, at a
town meeting called for the purpose, a committee, with
Adams as its chairman, was named to take into considera-
tion the misrepresentations of the Governor in his late mes-
sage to both Houses, respecting the proceedings of the town
at their memorable meeting. On Monday, the 23d, Adams,
in his report, occupying two columns of the Boston Gazette, ² took issue with Hutchinson on the legality of the town
meeting which had given birth to the Committees of Corre-
spondence. His Excellency had asserted that the subjects
considered at that meeting, which he held was illegal, were
such as a town, in its corporate capacity, had no right to act
upon. The reply first proves, by an act of the Province
made in the reign of William and Mary, that any town
meeting called by ten or more freeholders was legal.

"But," continues Adams, "were there no such laws of the Prov-
ince, or should our enemies pervert these and other laws made for
the same purpose from their plain and obvious intent and meaning,
still there is the great and perpetual law of self-preservation, to
which every natural person or corporate body hath an inherent right
to recur. This being the law of the Creator, no human law can be

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