By this time Boston had grown to import ance as the leading seaport, and in many respects the foremost town of America. Before the end of the 17th century its popiflation was approximately 7,000. In another half century this number was more than doubled. A good idea of certain aspects of the town in this period is given by an Englishman, Daniel Neal, who wrote in 1719: "The bay of Boston is spacious enough to contain in a manner the navy of England. The masts of ships here, and at proper seasons of the year, make a kind of of trees like that we see upon the river of Thames about Wapping and Limehouse, which may easily be imagined when we consider that by computation given into the col lectors of his Majesty's customs to the governor upon the building of the lighthouse, it appeared that there was 24,000 ton of shipping cleared annually.
"At the &Atom of the bay is a noble pier 1,800 or 2,000 foot long, with a row of warehouses on the north side for the use of merchants. The pier runs so far into the bay that ships of the greatest burthen may unlade without the help of boats or lighters. From the bead of the pier you go up the chief street of the town [now State Street], at the upper end of which is the town house or Exchange, a fine piece of building, containing, besides the walk for the merchants, the Council-Chamber, the House of Commons, and another spacious room for the sessions of the courts of justice. The Exchange is surrounded by booksellers' shops which have a good. trade. There are five printing Foresees in Boston. which are generally full of work, by which it appears that humanity and the knowledge of letters flourish more here than in all the other English Plantations put together; for in the city of New York there is but one shop. and in the Plantations of Virginia, Mary land, Carolina, Barbadoes, and the Islands, none at all." As in the 17th so in the 18th century, the clergy and ecclesiastical affairs loomed large upon the local horizon. The prominence in Boston records of what is known as the "Mather dynasty"—of which Increase and his son, Cot ton Mather, were the chief figures — bears wit ness to this condition. The younger of these Puritan priests is remembered largely for his connection with the witchcraft delusion, which had its worst effects in Salem, but in tem poral matters and humanitarian work he im pressed himself no less forcibly on the life of his time. Of the devout laity, educated at Har vard College, giving themselves to public serv ice, living private lives of dignity and piety, Samuel Sewall, whose diary preserves the true flavor of ancient Boston, stands as an admir able type. In contrast with the background of lives like his, the society of which royal gov ernors were the central figures presents a less austere picture. About the governors, estab lished from 1716 onward in a sort of vice-regal state in the Province House, gathered the more worldly element of the place—prosperous mer chants, officials of the Crown, members of the King's Chapel congregation and the two other Anglican churches established before the mid dle of the century. Under the province charter
religious liberty was increasing, and churches of various denominations—including even the Quakers, whose first representatives in Boston were hanged on the Common — had come into being. Meanwhile the constant friction between the governors and the General Court, always meeting in Boston, kept the spirit of political in dependence wide awake. A fruitful source of trouble was the annual grant voted by the court to the governor. A salary the people steadily refused to pay to an official not of their own choice; and the amount of the grant varied ac cording to the personal popularity of the chief magistrate. Through all these years, moreover, the town-meeting was educating the people in self-rule, so that when the time was ripe for active opposition from American colonists to the colonial government of England, the men of Boston were ready to take a leading part in the struggle.
In 1761 James Otis, advocate-general of the province, resigned his position under the Crown in order to contest the Writs of Assistance, winch permitted customs officials to enter any house, search for smuggled goods, and on sus picion seize what they might find. The argu ment against these writs was the first of many conspicuous acts of resistance to royal author ity. In 1765 the Stamp Act, taxing many articles of daily use in the colonies, was passed by Parliament. Its principle was bitterly re sented in Boston, where riotous outbreaks soon took place. A mob completely destroyed the house of Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice of the province, and was properly denounced by respectable citizens. In the next year the re peal of the act was joyfully celebrated by all classes. In 1770 occurred the aBoston Massa cre° (q.v.), the result of friction between the inhabitants and the British troops stationed in the town. In the use of ga word which his torians apply to such events as Cawnpore or the Sicilian Vespers"— the word gmassacre" to de scribe 'the careless shooting of half a dozen townsmen"—John Fiske finds gall the mildness of New England civilization brought most strikingly before us." The town-meeting was even more typical of this civilization, and from its training Samuel Adams, at about this time, stepped into virtual leadership of the revolu tionary cause in Boston. The Committee of Correspondence was formed upon his motion, and out of it grew by degrees the union not only of towns, but of colonies, in their opposi tion to the throne. On 16 Dec. 1773, occurred the gTea Party." a cleverly planned and exe cuted plot for throwing into Boston harbor, by men disguised as Mohawk Indians, the cargoes of three vessels bearing tea upon which the people of Boston would not pay the hated tax. Parliament retaliated by passing the Boston Port Bill, which dosed the harbor and brought the chief industry of the town, its maritime trade, to a standstill. A military governor, General Gage% took the place of Hutchinson, who had been acting as the chief civil magis trate, and open hostilities were g hand.