t of such
comprehensive patriotism that it came to be regarded as an exponent of
the feelings of the whole country. Its key-note was Union. In fitting
words Philadelphia (1768) grandly said to Boston,--"Let us never forget
that our strength depends on our union, and our liberty on our strength;
united we conquer, divided we die." Boston returned the pledge, "warmly
to recommend and industriously to promote that union among the several
Colonies which is so indispensably necessary for the security of the
whole."

Boston at this period is usually described as a noted and opulent
trading town,--the Great Town,--the Metropolis of New England,--the
best situated for commerce in North America,--the largest city in
the American British Empire. It had the air of an English city. Its
commodious residences had spacious lawns and gardens and fields; while
the contents of its stores, as seen in advertisements that sometimes
cover a broadside of the journals, and the number of ship-yards that
are shown by the maps to have girdled the town, betoken its business
activity. Its population of sixteen thousand, with its three thousand
voters, and no pauper class, had carefully nurtured the common school,
and was characterized not only by love of order, but by enterprise,
intelligence, and public spirit. It early welcomed the doctrine of a
right in the people to interpret the religious law and to fashion, the
political law, and thus practically welcomed freedom of thought and of
utterance, and acknowledged allegiance only to truth. It had tested for
more than a century the working of this principle, as it was carried out
in the congregation and in the municipality, in the Church and in the
State. By it each citizen was made deeply interested in the support of
liberty; and thus the town had not only a public, but a public life,
quietly nurtured as worthy citizens were successively called to manage
the local affairs. It furnished the instance of a community composed of
men of small estates who very rarely had to use a mark for their name,
and imbued by the spirit of individual independence toned into a respect
for law, which, on the decline of feudalism, began to play a part on
the national stage. Thus the political character of Boston was sharply
defined and firmly fixed. It started in the republican way, went on for
over a century in republican habits, and had the priceless heirloom of
principles and traditions that were certainly life-givi