such members as would have voted against the measure they had proposed
and carried.

On the 1st of June, exactly as the clock struck twelve, the custom-house
of Boston was shut up, and all lawful business ceased in its port. Its
trade was nominally transferred to Salem; but the spirit of rivalry
which formerly distinguished American merchants seemed now to be wholly
lost in sympathy. No one discovered the slightest inclination to profit
by the distress of the refractory town of Boston. The merchants and
freeholders of Salem, indeed, presented an address to General Gage,
censuring the measures that had been adopted, commiserating the people
of Boston, and declining to derive any advantage offered them by the
Boston Port Bill. Nature, they said, by the formation of their harbour,
forbade their becoming rivals with that convenient mart, and were it
otherwise they must be dead to every idea of justice, and lost to all
feelings of humanity, if they could indulge one thought of acquiring
wealth, and building up their fortunes upon the ruin of their suffering
neighbours. These certainly were sentiments honourable to humanity, but
unfortunately they were coupled with others of a different character.
The petitioners repeated the old saying, which was now become
notoriously false, that they still ardently wished to preserve their
connexion with the British empire: and yet the people of Salem falsified
their assertion on the very next day after it was made, by joining a
general association, which by this time had been got up by many of the
committees of correspondence, and which was called "a solemn league
and covenant," after the famous bond of their Puritan forefathers.
The nature of this league may be seen from the document which all its
members signed. It declared that the compact had been entered into as
the only means of avoiding the horrors of slavery, or the carnage and
desolation of civil war; that those who subscribed to it covenanted in
the presence of God to suspend all commercial intercourse with Great
Britain till the Boston Port Bill should be restored; and that they
would have no dealings with persons who would not sign it, or should
afterwards violate it, but would publish their names as enemies to
their country, and as men excommunicated or cut off from all social
intercourse. This league spread rapidly through all the states;
thousands joined it of their own free will, and others were impelled to
subscribe to