WHOEVER has conversed much with those who have been lately at Boston must know that the arrival of the King's troops at that town in 1768 was exceedingly disgustful to all that part of the people who call themselves the sons of liberty, and deny the authority of the British parliament to pass the late acts for imposing duties upon certain articles of trade imported into America, and who certainly form a great majority of the people in that town, though perhaps not of the persons of the best fortunes and most respectable characters in the place….

And as to the King's troops, who were sent thither in October 1768, they have been treated by these sons of liberty and well-disposed persons (as they stile themselves) with adegree of cruelty that could not have been justified…

For they not only, upon the first arrival of these troops at Boston, did everything in their power to prevent their having quarters assigned them, and to oblige them to continue in camp, though the

rigour of the winter-season was beginning to be felt; but they have ever since been traducing them with the most scurrilous and abusive language, and with malicious accusations, oftentimes entirely false and always overcharged.

It was become unsafe for an officer or soldier to walk the streets, and that they had been desired to take care of themselves by an inhabitant of the town, who had heard several of the people say that they would kill all the officers in town.

On Monday, the 5th of March, the day of the disturbance that proved fatal to some of the inhabitants, about seven o'clock in the evening, numbers of the towns-people of Boston were seen walking in the streets, in several different parties of from about three to six men each, armed with clubs. Mr. John Gillespie, in his deposition, (No.104.) declares that, as he was going to the south end of the town, to meet some friends at a public house, he met several peoplein the streets in parties of this kind, to the number, as he thinks, of forty or fifty persons; and that while he was sitting with his friends there, several persons of his acquaintance came in to them at different times, and took notice of the numbers of persons they had seen in the street armed in the above manner; and that about eight o'clock one Mr. Fleming came in and told them that three hundred people were assembled at Liberty-Tree armed with sticks and clubs to beat the soldiers.