e colonies right by
showing less concession and more power. Four regiments, as General
Gage said, would do the business. The average Briton therefore gave his
cordial approval to four "coercive" measures, passed by overwhelming
majorities in Parliament, which remodeled the Massachusetts charter,
authorized the Governor to transfer to courts in other colonies or to
England any cases involving a breach of the peace or the conduct of
public officers, provided for quartering troops on the inhabitants, and
closed the port of Boston until the East India Company should have been
compensated for the loss of its tea. In order to make these measures
effective, General Gage, commander of the American forces, was made
Governor of Massachussetts. To what extent he would find it necessary
to use the military depended upon the Bostonians. "The die is now
cast," the King wrote to Lord North; "the colonies must either submit
or triumph." The King's judgment was not always good; but it must be
conceded that in this instance he had penetrated to the very center of
the situation.

Massachusetts, very naturally, wished not to submit, but whether she
could triumph without the support of the other colonies was more than
doubtful; and it was to obtain this support, to devise if possible
a method of resistance agreeable to all, that the Congress was now
assembling at Philadelphia. The spirit in which the colonies received
the news of the Boston Port Bill augured well for union, for in every
colony it was felt that this was a challenge which could not be evaded
without giving the lie to ten years of high talk about the inalienable
rights of Englishmen. As Charles James Fox said, "all were taught to
consider the town of Boston as suffering in the common cause." This
sentiment John Adams found everywhere expressed--found everywhere, as
he took his leisurely journey southward, that people were "very firm" in
their determination to support Massachusetts against the oppression of
the British Government.

In respect to the measures which should be adopted to achieve the end
desired, there was not the same unanimity. Mr. Adams, at the age of
thirty-eight years, never having been out of New England, kept his
eyes very wide open as he entered the foreign colonies of New York
and Pennsylvania. In New York he was much impressed with the "elegant
country seats," with the bountiful hospitality, and the lavish way of
living. "A more elegant breakfast I neve