The letters of disapproval and discouragement,

1 Address sent by the Boston Committee to every Town in the Province, dated "Boston, June 8, 1774," re-printed in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 397.

" Form of a Covenant, sent to every Town in Massachusetts, by (he Committee in Boston, with the above-mentioned Address, Section 1st.

8 Richard Frothingham of Charlestown, in his Rise of the Kepublic of the United States, Boston : 1S72, 323, whose words are as follows :

"The Massachusetts Assembly convened on the twenty-fifth of May. "Samuel Adams was about to introduce Resolves for a Congress when "the Assembly (26th) was adjourned by the Governor to meet in Salem "on the seventh of June."

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

against the line of action proposed and solicited by the Town of Boston, in its formal Vote, on the thirteenth of May, of which Samuel Adams was the originator and by whom, as the Moderator of the Town-Meeting, its passage had been secured, continued to flow into that Town, from all directions, 1 carrying with them an influence, with that shrewd politician, which was more potential than all the enactments of the Parliament and all the power of the Home and the Colonial Governments had produced ; and he was not slow in accepting the alternative which those letters and the evident danger of a more complete isolation of the Town of Boston than he had supposed to have been possible, had sternly thrust upon him. Accordingly, on the seventeenth of June, the House of Representatives, assembled at Salem, more or less under the guidance of its Clerk, adopted a Resolution declaring that "a Meeting of " Committees from the several Colonies on this Con- " tinent is highly expedient and necessary, to con- " suit upon the present State of the Colonies and " the Miseries to which they are and must be reduced " by the operation of certain Acts of Parliament re- " specting America ; and to deliberate and determine "upon wise and proper Measures to be by them " recommended to all the Colonies, for the recovery " and establishment of their just Rights and Liber- "ties, civil and religious, and the restoration "of Union and Harmony between Great Britain " and the Colonies, most ardently desired by all "good Men." At the same time, five persons, of whom Samuel Adams was one, "were appointed a Committee, on the part of this Province, " for the Purposes aforesaid, any three of whom to be " a Quorum, to meet such Committees or Delegates " from the other Colonies as have been or may be ap- " pointed either by their respective Houses of Bur- " gesses or Representatives, or by Conventions, or by " the Committees of Correspondence appointed by "the respective Houses of Assembly, to meet in the " City of Philadelphia, or any other Place that shall " be judged most suitable by the Committee, on the "first Day of September next ; and that the Speaker "of the House be directed, in a Letter to the Speakers "of the Houses of Burgesses or Representatives in " the several Colonies, to inform them of the sub- " stance of these Resolves." 2