t the duty on tea, which the king insisted upon
retaining, in order to avoid surrendering the principle at issue. The
effect of even this partial concession was to weaken the spirit of
opposition in America, and to create a division among the colonies. In
July the merchants of New York refused to adhere any longer to the
non-importation agreement except with regard to tea, and they began
sending orders to England for various sorts of merchandise. Rhode Island
and New Hampshire also broke the agreement. This aroused general
indignation, and ships from the three delinquent colonies were driven
from such ports as Boston and Charleston.

[Sidenote: Want of union.]

Union among the colonies was indeed only skin deep. The only thing
which kept it alive was British aggression. Almost every colony had some
bone of contention with its neighbours. At this moment New York and New
Hampshire were wrangling over the possession of the Green Mountains, and
guerrilla warfare was going on between Connecticut and Pennsylvania in
the valley of Wyoming. It was hard to secure concerted action about
anything. For two years after the withdrawal of troops from Boston there
was a good deal of disturbance in different parts of the country;
quarrels between governors and their assemblies were kept up with
increasing bitterness; in North Carolina there was an insurrection
against the governor which was suppressed only after a bloody battle
near the Cape Fear river; in Rhode Island the revenue schooner Gaspee
was seized and burned, and when an order came from the ministry
requiring the offenders to be sent to England for trial, the
chief-justice of Rhode Island, Stephen Hopkins, refused to obey the
order. But amid all these disturbances there appeared nothing like
concerted action on the part of the colonies. In June, 1772, Hutchinson
said that the union of the colonies seemed to be broken, and he hoped it
would not be renewed, for he believed it meant separation from the
mother-country, and that he regarded as the worst of calamities.

CHAPTER V.

THE CRISIS.

[Sidenote: Salaries of the judges.]

The surest way to renew and cement the union was to show that the
ministry had not relaxed in its determination to enforce the principle
of the Townshend acts. This was made clear in August, 1772, when it was
ordered that in Massachusetts the judges should henceforth be paid by
the crown. Popular excitement rose to fever heat, and th