2 " Lord Sandwich.-- Do not the New England Fishing-ships carry on "an illicit Trade with the French?

" Commodore Shdldham.-- Certainly ; their Ships meet at Sea ; and " they supply them with Provisions, Rum, Stores, and the Ships them- "selves ; and return loaded with French Manufactures."-- (Examination of Commodore Slmldham, Governor of Nm-fomidland, before the House of Lords, March 15, 1775.)

3 It will not be out of place, in this connection, to state the fact that Boston could have averted all the evils ascribed to the Boston Port-Bill by paying for what some of her lawless inhabitants had destroyed -as' property destroyed by mobs, in our day, must be paid for by the County in which it is destroyed, as Alleghauy-couuty, Pennsylvania, sorrowfully knows, as one ol the several results of the notable " Pittsburg Riots " of 1877. She was evidently inclined to do so, in the beginning: but she was counselled by the Caucus of Town Committees, prompted by Joseph Warren, not to do so ; and the Committee of Correspondence at Philadelphia subsequently urged her to pay, without success. As will be seen in another part of this Chapter, however, the infliction of the Boston Port- Bill was a pecuniary advantage to that Town ; and it is not imposMbla that it was foreseen, at that time, that a payment for the Tea which had been destroyed by one oi her mobs, would deprive the Town of all the pecuniary advantages to be derived from a refusal to do so.