from any hatred to them. The next day the soldiers were in every street, saying aloud: 'God preserve the commissioners of customs, who have brought us into such a blessed country!'' It was insisted upon by the Americans, and apparently on good grounds, that the quartering of a military force at Boston was not only an arbitrary and irritating measure, but that it was neither rendered necessary by the state of affairs in the surrounding province, nor had the recent riots. been of so serious a character as to justify the proceeding. "The king," said Samuel Adams, "has no right to send troops here to invade the country. They come as foreign enemies." What blame, in fact, there was, lay chiefly in the government and its servants. When Governor Wentworth quitted Boston, it was with the full conviction that "more obstructions had arisen in the country from the servants of government," than from any other 44 1" It was with no small indignation," according to an American writer of that day, "that the people beheld the Representatives' Chamber, Court House, and Faneuil Hall-seats of freedom and justice-occupied by troops, and guards placed at the doors, and the Council passing through the guards in going to their own Chamber. They resented also the Common being covered with tents and alive with soldiers; their marchings and countermarchings to relieve the guards; the town's being a perfect garrison, and the inhabitants being challenged by the sentinels as they passed and repassed. Persons, devoutly inclined, complained much of being disturbed at public worship on the Sabbaths with drums beating and fifes playing, to which they had never been accustomed in the Massachusetts." |