? 'Shall we abide
by our resolutions?' it was asked. Adams and Young were in favour of
that course; Quincy, distinguished as a statesman and patriot, advised
discretion; but the people cried, 'Our hands have been put to the
plough; we must not look back;' and the whole assemblage of seven
thousand persons voted unanimously that the tea should not be landed.

"Darkness in the meantime had settled upon the town, and in the
dimly-lighted church the audience awaited the return of Rotch. At a
quarter before six he made his appearance, and reported that the
Governor had refused him his pass. 'We can do no more to save the
country,' said Samuel Adams; and a momentary silence ensued. The next
instant a shout was heard at the door; the war-whoop sounded; and forty
or fifty men, disguised as Indians, hurried along to Griffin's Wharf,
posted guards to prevent intrusion, boarded the ships, and in three
hours' time had broken and emptied into the sea three hundred and
forty-two chests of tea. So great was the stillness, that the blows of
the hatchets as the chests were split open were distinctly heard. When
the deed was done, every one retired, and the town was as quiet as if
nothing had occurred."[321]

The foregoing threefold narrative presents substantially the American
case of destroying the East India Company's tea by the inhabitants of
Boston. The account by Mr. Bancroft is more elaborate, digressive,
dramatic, and declamatory, but not so consecutive or concise as the
preceding. Governor Hutchinson, who had advised the very policy which
now recoiled upon himself, corroborates in all essential points the
narrative given above. He states, however, what is slightly intimated
above by Dr. Ramsay, that the opposition commenced by the merchants
against the monopoly of the East India Company, rather than against the
tax itself, which had been paid without murmuring for two years, and
that the parliamentary tax on tea was seized upon, at the suggestion of
merchants in England, to defeat the monopoly of the East India Company,
and to revive and perpetuate the excitement against the British
Parliament which had been created by the Stamp Act, and which was
rapidly subsiding. Governor Hutchinson says:

"When the intelligence first came to Boston it caused no alarm. The
threepenny duty had been paid the last two years without any stir, and
some of the great friends to liberty had been importers of tea. The body
of the people were please