Great Britain. It was
with regret that he had come to this conclusion, and he was very slow in
proclaiming it, but after 1768 he kept it distinctly before his mind. He
saw clearly the end toward which public opinion was gradually drifting,
and because of his great influence over the Boston town-meeting and the
Massachusetts assembly, this clearness of purpose made him for the next
seven years the most formidable of the king's antagonists in America.

The people of Boston were all the more indignant at the arrival of
troops in their town because the king in his hurry to send them had even
disregarded the act of Parliament which provided for such cases.
According to that act the soldiers ought to have been lodged in Castle
William on one of the little islands in the harbour. Even according to
British-made law they had no business to be quartered in Boston so long
as there was room for them, in the Castle. During the next seventeen
months the people made several formal protests against their presence in
town, and asked for their removal. But these protests were all fruitless
until innocent blood had been shed. The soldiers generally behaved no
worse than rough troopers on such occasions are apt to do, and the
townspeople for the most part preserved decorum, but quarrels now and
then occurred, and after a while became frequent. In September, 1769,
James Otis was brutally assaulted at the British Coffee House by one of
the commissioners of customs aided and abetted by two or three army
officers. His health was already feeble and in this affray he was struck
on the head with a sword and so badly injured that he afterward became
insane. After this the feeling of the people toward the soldiers was
more bitter than ever. In February, 1770, there was much disturbance.
Toward the end of the month an informer named Richardson fired from his
window into a crowd and killed a little boy about eleven years of age,
named Christopher Snyder. The funeral of this poor boy, the first victim
of the Revolution, was attended on Monday, the 26th, by a great
procession of citizens, including those foremost in wealth and
influence.

[Sidenote: The "Boston Massacre."]

The rest of that week was full of collisions which on Friday almost
amounted to a riot and led the governor's council to consider seriously
whether the troops ought not to be removed. But before they had settled
the question the crisis came on Monday evening, March 5, in an af