“We don’t want to hear it,” shouted the people.
“We are assembled in orderly town meeting. I think we had better hear what the governor has to communicate,” said Samuel Adams, and the great audience became silent. Tom’s blood began to boil as the sheriff read:—
“You are openly violating, defying, and setting at nought the good and wholesome laws of the Province under which you live. I warn you, exhort, and require each of you, thus unlawfully assembled, forthwith to disperse, and to surcease all further unlawful proceedings at your utmost peril.”
Tom, and all around him hissed.
“We won’t disperse till we’ve done our business,” shouted a man in the centre of the house.
“We will attend to our affairs, and Tommy Hutchinson may mind his own business,” cried another.
“Let us hear from Mr. Rotch,” the shout.
Mr. Rotch, a young merchant, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and who owned the Dartmouth, rose.
“I am willing the tea should go back without being landed,” he said.
The people clapped their hands.