George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

[475] landed.¹ After a few days' reflection, the commis-

Chap. L.} 1773. Nov.

sioners for that city, finding the discontent universal, threw up their places; yet the Sons of Liberty continued their watchfulness; a paper signed Legion, ordered the pilots not to bring tea-ships above the Hook; and ‘the Mohawks’ were notified to be in eadiness, in case of their arrival.²

This example renewed the hope, that a similar expedient might succeed in Boston. Members of the Council, of greatest influence, intimated that the best thing that could be done to quiet the people would be the refusal of the consignees to execute the trust; and the merchants, though they declared against mobs and violence, yet as generally wished that the teas might not be landed.³

On Wednesday the seventeenth, a ship which had made a short passage from London, brought an authentic account that the Boston tea-ships had sailed; the next day, there was once more a legal Town Meeting to entreat the consignees to resign. Upon their repeated refusal, the town passed no vote and uttered no opinion, but immediately broke up. The silence of the dissolution struck more terror than former menaces. The consignees saw that the legal Town Meeting had finished its work, and that henceforward they were in the hands of the Committee of Correspondence. On Monday the twenty-second, the Committees of Dorchester, Roxbury, Brookline, and Cambridge, met the Boston Committee by invitation ^{4 5}