was on fire at once, and after the timid governor had declined to seize
such of the British naval officers as were in the town, the crowd,
terrible in its anger, came thundering down King Street and played the
sheriff for itself. The hair of His Majesty's haughty commanders and
lieutenants must have crisped under their wigs when they looked out of the
windows of the coffee-house and saw them. In walks the citizens'
deputation, with scant ceremony: protests are unavailing: off to jail His
Majesty's officers must straightway march, leaving their bottles of wine
half emptied, and their chairs upset on the sawdusted floor; and in jail
must they abide, until those impressed Bostonians have been liberated. It
was a wholesome lesson; and among the children who ran and shouted beside
the procession to the prison were those who, when they were men grown,
threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

In 1748 the Peace was made, and the Duke of Newcastle, a flighty, trivial
and faithless creature, gave place to the strict, honest, and narrow Duke
of Bedford as Secretary of the Colonies. The colonies had been under the
charge of the Board of Commissioners, who could issue what orders they
chose, but had no power to enforce them; and as the colonial assemblies
slighted their commands except when it pleased them to do otherwise, much
exasperation ensued on the Commissioners' part. The difficulties would
have been minimized had it not been the habit of Newcastle to send out as
colonial officials the offscourings of the British aristocracy: and when a
British aristocrat is worthless, nothing can be more worthless than he.
The upshot of the situation was that the colonists did what they pleased,
regardless of orders from home; while yet the promulgation of those
orders, aiming to defend injustices and iniquities, kept up a chronic and
growing disaffection toward England. So it had been under Newcastle, who
had uniformly avoided personal annoyance by omitting to read the constant
complaints of the Commissioners; but Bedford was a man of another stamp,