This
state-paper, which was read the world over, represented the people of
Boston as being "in a state of disobedience to all law and government,
and to have proceeded to measures subversive of the Constitution, and
attended with circumstances that might manifest a disposition to throw
off their dependence upon Great Britain"; and it contained a pledge
"to defeat the mischievous designs of those turbulent and seditious
persons who, under false pretences, had but too successfully deluded
numbers," and whose designs, if not defeated, could not fail to
produce the most serious consequences, not only to the Colonies
immediately, but, in the end, to all the dominions of the Crown.
The Patriots remarked, (January 14, 1769,) that the countenances of a
few, who seemed to enjoy a triumph, were now very jocund; but that His
Majesty's loyal subjects were distressed that he had conceived such an
unfavorable sentiment of the temper of the people, who, far from the
remotest disposition to faction or rebellion, were struggling, as they
apprehended, for a constitution which supported the Crown, and for the
rights devised to them by their Charter and confirmed to them by the
declaration of His Majesty's glorious ancestors, William and Mary, at
that important era, the Revolution.
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