Now, good men of the law! pray, who is in fault,
The one who begun, or resents the assault?'
The Boston Committee of Correspondence were busy night and day preparing the people of the province for energetic action, and it needed but a slight offense to sound the battle cry and invoke the sword of rebellion from its scabbard. **
Alarmed at the rebellious spirit manifested on all sides, Gage removed the seat August, 1774 of government from Salem back to Boston, and began to fortify the Neck. The work went on slowly at first, for British gold could not buy Boston carpenters, and workmen had to be procured from other places. The people viewed these warlike preparations with indignation, which was heightened by an injudicious act of Gage in sending a detach-
* There were five newspapers printed in Boston in 1774, as follows: the Boston Past, on Monday morning, by Thomas and John Fleet; the Boston News-Letter, by Margaret Draper (widow of Richard Draper) and Robert Boyle; the Massachusetts Gazette awl Boston Post Boy and Advertiser, by Mills and Hicks; the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, by Edes and Gill; and the Massachusetts Spy, by Isaiah Thomas.—See Thomas's History of Printing.
** Anderson was the father of Dr. Alexander Anderson of New York, the earliest wood-engraver, as a distinct art, in America. Now (1855), at the age of eighty years, he uses the graver with all the skill and vigor of earlier manhood.
*** The committee of 1774 consisted of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, John Adams, William Phillips, Joseph Warren, and Josiah Quincy. The importance of these committees of correspondence may be understood by the estimate placed upon them by a Tory writer over the signature of Massachusettensis. "This," he said, "is the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition. It is the source of the rebellion. I saw the small seed when it was implanted; it was a grain of mustard. I have watched the plant until it has become a great tree. The vilest reptiles that crawl upon the earth are concealed at the root; the foulest birds of the air rest upon its branches. I now would induce you to go to work immediately with axes and hatchets and cut it down, for a two-fold reason: because it is a pest to society, and lest it be felled suddenly by a stronger arm, and crush its thousands in its fall."