HKB
they might justly have been expected to pay the money demanded themselves, and set themselves industriously to work to prevent it, and engage the other colonies to espouse their cause.
This was a crisis too important and alarming to the province to be neglected by its friends. A number of as respectable persons as any in this province, belonging to Boston, Cambridge, Salem and Marblehead, now came forward, publicly to disavow the proceedings of the whigs, to do justice to the much injured character of Mr. Hutchinson, and to strengthen his influence at the court of Great Britain, where he was going to receive the well deserved plaudit of his sovereign, that he might be able to obtain a repeal or some mitigation of that act, the terms of which they foresaw, the perverseness of the whigs would prevent a compliance with. This was done by several addresses, which were subscribed by upwards of two hundred persons, and would have been by many more, had not the sudden embarkation of Mr. Hutchinson prevented it. The justices of the court of common pleas and general sessions of the peace for the county of Plymouth, sent their address to him in England. There were some of almost all orders of men among these addressers, but they consisted principally of men of property, large family connections, and several were independent in their circumstances, and lived wholly upon the income of their estates. Some indeed might be called partizans; but a very considerable proportion were persons that had of choice kept themselves at a distance from the political vortex; had beheld the competition of the whigs and tories without any emotion, while the community remained safe; had looked down on the political dance in its various mazes and intricacies, and saw one falling, another rising, rather as a matter of amusement; but when they saw the capital of the province upon the point of being sacrificed by political cunning, it called up all their feelings.