" Yet all this was beside the main point, which was that
the action of Congress, whether expedient or not, was illegal. It
was illegal because it authorized the committees to enforce the
Association upon all alike, upon those who never agreed to
observe it as well as upon those who did; and these committees,
as everyone knew, were so enforcing it and were "imposing
penalties upon those who have presumed to violate it." The
Congress talked loudly of the tyranny of the British Government.
Tyranny! Good Heavens! Was any tyranny worse than that of
self-constituted committees which, in the name of liberty, were
daily conducting the most hateful inquisition into the private
affairs of free British subjects? "Will you choose such
committees? Will you submit to them should they be chosen by the
weak, foolish, turbulent part of the...people? I will not.
No. If I must be enslaved, let it be by a KING at least, and not
by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen."
The Massachusetts men were meanwhile showing no disposition to
submit to the King. In that colony a Provincial Congress,
organized at Salem in October, 1774, and afterwards removed to
Cambridge, had assumed all powers of government in spite of
General Gage and contrary to the provisions of the act by which
Parliament had presumed to remodel the Massachusetts charter.
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