“ Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found “Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet.” Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston “town” was drawing society from the “country.” ”

“ The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded—often evading British laws—with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. ”

“ The Tea Act of 1773 was defied by the emptying into the harbour of three cargoes of tea on the 16th of December 1773, by a party of citizens disguised as Indians, after the people in town-meeting had exhausted every effort, through a period of weeks, to procure the return of the tea-ships to England. To this act Great Britain replied by various penal regulations and reconstructive acts of government. She quartered troops in Boston; she made the juries, sheriffs and judges of the colony dependent on the royal officers; she ordered capital offenders to be tried in Nova Scotia or England ”