e ministerial policy, and many remained
so to the end of their lives. But with every stage in the conflict they
looked with increasing apprehension upon the growing influence of
obscure leaders who proclaimed the rights of the people. The prevalence
of mobs; the entrance of the unfranchised populace, by means of "body"
meetings and mass meetings, into the political arena; the leveling
principles and the smug self-righteousness of the patriot
politicians;--all this led many a conservative to consider whether his
interest were not more threatened by the insurgence of radicalism in
America than by the alleged oppression of British legislation. Boston is
indeed mad, Hutchinson writes in 1770. The frenzy, kept up by "two or
three of the most abandoned atheist fellows in the world, united with as
many precise enthusiast deacons, who head the rabble in all their
meetings," was not higher "when they banished my pious great-grandmother,
when they hanged the Quakers." People of "the best character and
estate ... decline attending. Town Meetings where they are
sure to be outvoted by men of the lowest orders." And even in
Philadelphia, where, according to Joseph Reed, "there have been no mobs,
the frequent appeals to the people must in time occasion a change." "We
are hastening on to desperate resolutions," he assured Dartmouth, and
"our most wise and sensible citizens dread the anarchy and confusion
that must ensue."

They were, indeed, hastening on to desperate resolutions on that 5th of
September when men from twelve colonies assembled in Carpenter's Hall to
form the First Continental Congress. A body of able men, it represented
the division as well as the unity that prevailed in America; for there
Galloway and Isaac Low, soon to become Loyalists, sat with Patrick Henry
and Samuel Adams, ready to welcome independence; of one opinion that
American rights were threatened, irreconcilably opposed in their
methods of defending them. John Adams, traveling by easy stages to
Philadelphia, had noted with some surprise how greatly the Middle
colonies feared "the levelling spirit of New England"; and he now found
in the Congress many men who would hear "no expression which looked like
an allusion to the last appeal"; men who were quite content to confine
the action of Congress to protest and negotiation, deeming a
non-intercourse measure useless if voluntary and revolutionary if
maintained by force. For two weeks the advantage seemed to li