agreement in part.... Her example followed.... Riot in
Boston.... Trial and acquittal of Captain Preston.

{1763}

The attachment of the colonies to the mother country was never
stronger than at the signature of the treaty of Paris.[178] The union
of that tract of country which extends from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi, and from the gulf of Mexico to the north pole, was deemed
a certain guarantee of future peace, and an effectual security against
the return of those bloody scenes from which no condition in life
could afford an exemption.

[Footnote 178: After the expulsion of the French from
Canada, a considerable degree of ill humour was manifested
in Massachusetts with respect to the manner in which the
laws of trade were executed. A question was agitated in
court, in which the colony took a very deep interest. A
custom house officer applied for what was termed "a writ of
assistance," which was an authority to search any house for
dutiable articles suspected to be concealed in it. The right
to grant special warrants was not contested; but this grant
of a general warrant was deemed contrary to the principles
of liberty, and an engine of oppression equally useless and
vexatious, which would enable every petty officer of the
customs to gratify his resentments by harassing the most
respectable men in the province. The ill temper excited on
this occasion was shown by a reduction of the salaries of
the judges; but no diminution of attachment to the mother
country appears to have been produced by it.]

This state of things, long and anxiously wished for by British
America, had, at length, been effected by the union of British and
American arms. The soldiers of the parent state and her colonies had
co-operated in the same service, their blood had mingled in the same
plains, and the object pursued was common to both people.

While the British nation was endeared to the Americans by this
community of danger, and identity of interest, the brilliant
achievements of the war had exalted to enthusiasm their admiration of
British valour. They were proud of the land of their ancestors, and
gloried in their descent from Englishmen. But this sentiment was not
confined to the military character of the nation. While the excellence
of the English constitution was a rich theme of declamation, every
colonist believed himself entitled to it