After characterizing as truly alarming to a free people the array of
ships of war around it and the troops within it, the address
proceeds,--"Your Excellency can witness for the town that no such aid
is necessary; loyalty to the sovereign, and an inflexible zeal for the
support of His Majesty's authority and the happy Constitution, is its
just character; and we may appeal to an impartial world, that peace
and order were better maintained in the town before it was even
rumored that His Majesty's troops were to be quartered among us than
they have been since"; and the judgment is expressed, that the opinion
entertained abroad as to the condition of things in Boston could have
arisen only from a great misapprehension, by His Majesty's Ministers,
as to the behavior of individuals or the public transactions of the
town.
To this rather troublesome request the Governor returned a very brief
and curt answer,--that he had no reason to think that the public
transactions had been misapprehended by the Government, "or that their
opinions thereon were founded upon any other accounts than those
published by the town itself"; and he coolly added,--"If, therefore,
you can vindicate yourselves from such charges as may arise from your
own publications, you will, in my opinion, have nothing further to
apprehend.
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