At any rate, the ministers went a certain way towards acting upon it. In March, 1774, after communicating to the House the despatches from America, the leaders of the government, now under Lord North, proposed and carried very drastic measures. By one bill they closed the port of Boston, transferring its trade after the first of June to the older port of Salem. Since the headstrong town would not have the tea, it should have no trade at all. By another bill they suspended the charter of the colony. By a third they made provision for the quartering of troops within the province; and by a fourth they legalized the transfer to England of trials growing out of attempts to quell riots in the colony. News lingered on the seas in those days, waiting for the wind, and the critical news of what had been done in Parliament moved no faster than the rest. It was the 2d of June before the text of the new statutes was known in Boston. That same month, almost upon that very day, Thomas Hutchinson, the constant-minded governor whom Samuel Adams had tricked, hated, and beaten in the game of politics, left his perplexing post and took ship for England, never to return. Born and bred in Massachusetts, of the stock of the colony itself, he had nevertheless stood steadfastly to his duty as an officer of the crown, deeming Massachusetts best served by the law. He had suffered more than most men would have endured, but his sufferings had not blinded him with passion. He knew as well as any man the real state of affairs in the colony,—though he looked at them as governor, not as the people’s advocate,—and now went to England to make them clear to the ministers. “The prevalence of a spirit of opposition to government in the plantation,” he had already written them, “is the natural consequence of the great growth of colonies so remote from the parent state, and not the effect of oppression in the King or his servants, as the promoters of this spirit would have the world to believe.” It would be of good omen for the settlement of difficulties if he could make the ministers see that the spirit which so angered them was natural, and not born of mere rebellion. [Illustration: GENERAL GAGE] [Illustration: STOVE IN THE HOUSE OF BURGESSES, VIRGINIA]