At the same time that the House of Representatives, at Salem, was thus adding the weight of its official judgment against the line of action proposed and solicited by the Town of Boston and in support of that proposed and insisted on by the Committee in New York, the former, also, in a duly assembled Town-Meeting, John Adams occupying the Chair, in seeming forgetfulness of its Vote, on the thirteenth of

1 Despatch from Governor Gage to the Earl of Dartmouth, " Boston, 31st "May, 1774," laid before Parliament, on the nineteenth of January, 1775 -- (Parliamentary Register, i., 36.)

2 Journal of the House of Representatives, June 17, 1774.

the preceding month, willingly or unwillingly, formally wheeled into the line of the general opposition to the Home Government, under the guidance of that foreign Committee ; and, without making the slightest allusion to her ill-conceived and injudicious action, in her adoption of that Vote, the Town " en- " joined " the Committee of Correspondence, " forth- " with, to write to all the other Colonies, acquainting "them that we are waiting with anxious expectation "for the Result of a Continental Congress, whose " Meeting we impatiently desire, in whose Wisdom "and Firmness we can confide, and in whose Deter- " mination we shall cheerfully acquiesce " 3 -- a change of policy which was, in the highest degree, remarkable, and which would be entirely unaccountable were the capabilities of Massachusetts-men, of every period, for making remarkable changes of policy and of action, whenever their material interests have seemed to call for such changes, less known to the great world in which we live.