commanding officer (Maj. Gen. Wm. Keppel was colonel of the British regiments at Boston and at the Castle) to remove the troops, would cause him to do it, though he should receive no authoritative "order." As soon as they met, a committee from the town-meeting attended, with a second message, to acquaint the lieutenant-governor that it was the unanimous voice of the people assembled, consisting, as they said, of near three thousand persons, that nothing less than a total and immediate removal of the troops would satisfy them. Here Hutchinson adds, in a note, at the end of this page, as follows::- "The chairman of the committee, in conversation with Lieut. Col. Dalrymple, said to him, that if he could remove the 29th regiment, he could remove the 14th also, and it was at his peril to refuse it. This was a strong expression of that determined spirit which animated all future measures." The Council, continues Hutchinson, who were divided in the forenoon, were now unanimous; and each of them, separately, declared his opinion, and gave his reason for it; and one or more of them observed to the lieutenant-governor that he would not be able to justify a refusal to comply with the unanimous advice of the Council, and that all the consequences would be chargeable upon him alone. The secretary of the province, Andrew Oliver, Esq., who thought differently in the morning, the two lieutenant-colonels, and the commander of one of his majesty's ships then upon the station, who were all present in Council, concurred in the necessity of his complying. He had signified his own opinion that, at all events, the governor and Council should avoid interfering in the destination of the troops, and leave it to the commanding officer; but when he considered that, by the charter, the Council was constituted for advice and assistance to him, that he had called them together for that purpose,—that his standing out alone would probably bring on a general convulsion, which the unanimity of the king's servants might have prevented, he consented to signify his desire, founded upon the unanimous opinion and advice of the Council, that the troops might be removed to the barracks in the Castle; at the same time disclaiming all authority to order their removal. Some of the officers of the regiments appeared, the next day, to be greatly dissatisfied with being compelled by the people to leave the town so disgracefully. Expresses were sent away immediately to the general. The jealousy that the general would forbid the removal caused THE MASSACRE. further measures to force the troops from the town before there could be sufficient time for his answer. Roxbury, the next town to Boston, assembled, and sent a committee of their principal inhabitants with an address to the lieutenant-governor, praying him to interpose, and to order the immediate removal of the troops; but he refused to concern himself any further in the affair. As the time approached when a return might be expected from New York, it was thought fit to have another meeting of the town of Boston, and a committee was appointed further to apply to the lieutenant-governor to order the troops out of town; Mr. Adams, their prolocutor, pressing the matter with great vehcmence, and intimating that, in case of refusal, the rage of the people would vent itself against the lieutenant-governor in particular. He gave a peremptory refusal, and expressed his resentment at the menace. The committee then applied to the commanding officer, and the same day, March 10, the 29th regiment, and the next morning the 14th, were removed to the Castle. This success, concludes Hutchinson, gave greater assurances than ever that, by firmness, the great object, exemption from all exterior power, civil or military, would finally be obtained. Checks and temporary interruptions might happen, but they would be surmounted, and the progress of liberty would The time for holding the Superior Court for Suffolk was the next week after the tragical action in King-street. Although bills were found by the grand jury, yet the court, says Hutchinson, considering the disordered state of the town, had thought fit to continue the trials to the next term, when the minds of people would be more free from prejudice, and a dispassionate, impartial jury might be expected, after there had been sufficient time for the people to cool. A considerable number of the most active persons in all public measures of the town having dined together, relates Hutchinson, went in a body from table to the Superior Court, then sitting, with Samuel Adams at their head, and, in behalf of the town, pressed the bringing on the trial at the same term with so much spirit, that the judges did not think it advisable to abide by their own order, but appointed a day for the trials, and adjourned the court for that purBut even this irregularity the lieutenant-governor thought it pose. best not to notice in a public message; and for the grand point, the relation between the Parliament and the colonies, he had determined to avoid any dispute with the assembly, unless he should be forced into it. Therefore, after acquainting them that he should transmit the remonstrance to be laid before the king, and attempting a vindication of his own character from their charges against it, he dissolved the assembly,—the time, by charter, for a new assembly approaching. The trials of the soldiers implicated in the massacre occurred on the October term of that year. The evidence against the four persons tried for firing from the custom-house being only that of a French boy, the jury acquitted them without leaving the bar. It was proved that the boy was at a remote part of the town the whole time that he swore he was at the custom-house and in King-street. The court ordered that he should be committed and prosecuted for wilful perjury; and, by his own confession, he was convicted. Captain Preston had been well advised to retain two gentlemen of the law, says Hutchinson,-Josiah Quincy and John Adams,-who were strongly attached to the cause of liberty, and to stick at no reasonable fees for that purpose; and this measure proved of great service to him. He was also well informed of the characters of the jury, and challenged such as were most likely to be under bias. Three or four witnesses swore that he ordered his men to fire; but their evidence was encountered by that of several other witnesses, who stood next to him, and were conversing with him at a different place from that which the witnesses for the crown swore he was in; and the judges, in summing up the evidence to the jury, were unanimous in their opinion that he did not order his men to fire; but if he did, they were of opinion that, from the evidence of many other witnesses, the assault both upon the officer and men, while upon duty, was so violent, that the homicide could not amount even to manslaughter, but must be considered as excusable homicide. The jury soon agreed upon a verdict of not guilty, and the prisoner, being discharged, retired to the Castle, and remained there until he sailed for England, where he was pensioned. A few days after the trials, while the court continued to sit, an incendiary paper was posted in the night upon the door of the town-house, complaining of the court for cheating the people with a show of justice, and calling upon them to rise and free the world from such domestic tyrants. We refer to the printed trials for the results in the other cases. In order to repel the insinuation of Hutchinson regarding abundant fees, we will give the relation of John Adams on this point. After stating that he accepted a single guinea as a retaining fee, Mr. Adams states:—"From first to last, I never said a word about fees, in any of those cases; and I should have said nothing about them here, if calumnies and insinuations had not been propagated, that I was tempted by great fees and enormous sums of money. Before or after the trial, Preston sent me ten guineas, and at the trial of the soldiers after wards, eight guineas more, which were all the fees I ever received, or were offered to me; and I should not have said anything on the subject to my clients, if they had never offered me anything. This was all the pecuniary reward I ever had for fourteen or fifteen days' labor in the most exhausting and fatiguing causes I ever tried, for hazarding a popularity very general and very hardly earned, and for incurring a clamor of popular suspicions and prejudices, which are not yet worn out, and never will be forgotten as long as the history of this period is read." And, on another occasion, Mr. Adams further remarked:-"I have reason to remember that fatal night. The part I took in defence of Capt. Preston and the soldiers procured me anxiety and obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country. Judgment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain upon this country as the executions of the Quakers or witches anciently. As the evidence was, the verdict of the jury was exactly right. This, however, is no reason why the town should not call the action of that night a massacre; nor is it any argument in favor of the governor or minister who caused them to be sent here. But it is the strongest of proofs of the danger of standing armies." The Boston Athenæum overlooks the cemetery where were deposited the remains of our fellow-citizens martyred in the cause of liberty, March 5, 1770. Here repose the ashes of Hancock and Cushing, the latter of whom was lieutenant-governor during the administration of the former. Though Sumner speaks of "Hancock's broken column," the idea is merely poetical, for no monument has ever been erected over his remains. It is stated in the Boston News Letter that four of the victims were conveyed on hearses, and buried on the eighth of March, in one vault, in the Middle Burying Ground. The funeral consisted of an immense number of persons in ranks of six, followed by a long train of carriages belonging to the principal gentry of the town, at which time the bells of Boston and adjoining towns were tolled. It is supposed that a greater number of people of Boston and vicinity attended this funeral than were ever congregated on this continent on any occasion. In this procession emblematical banners were displayed. The following effusion appeared in Fleet's Post, March 12, 1770: "With fire enwrapt, surcharged with sudden death, How Caldwell, Attucks, Gray and Maverick fell." On the fourteenth of March, Patrick Carr, who died of the wound received in the massacre, was buried from Faneuil Hall, in the same grave in which the other victims were deposited. The poet who wrote the effusion above quoted predicts that the lettered stone shall tell the tale of the martyred sons of liberty; but no stone appears on the spot where they were buried. Indeed, if any stone were ever erected over their remains, it may have been destroyed by the British regulars, or removed in making repairs on the ground. Let the prediction be realized by the erection of a beautiful marble monument on the site to the memory of this event, which, with the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, insured our independence. Our venerable native citizen of Boston, the Hon. Thomas Handyside Perkins, probably the only survivor who has any remembrance of the Boston massacre, stated to the editor of this work, at an interview with him on Jan. 3, 1851, that at that period he was five years of age, and asleep at home on the evening of its occurrence. His father, James Perkins, a wine-merchant, resided in King-street, on the present location of Tappan's stone building, opposite Mackerellane, now Kilby-street. On the next day, his father's man-servant, being desirous that he should witness the effects of this occurrence, imprudently, as Mr. Perkins remarked, went with him to the Royal Exchange Tavern, located on the opposite side of the custom-house, now the site of the Messrs. Gilberts, brokers, kept by Mr. Stone. Alexander Cruikshank testified that when he was at the head of |