Such action was the more worthy of remark because taken very quietly, and as if the Congress had of course the right to lead, to speak for the majority and command the minority in the colonies, united and acting like a single body politic. There was no haste, no unusual excitement, no fearful looking for trouble in the proceedings of this new and quite unexampled assembly. On the contrary, its members had minds sufficiently at ease to enjoy throughout all their business the entertainments and the attractive social ways of the busy, well-appointed, cheerful, gracious town, the chief city of the colonies, in which there was so much to interest and engage. Dinings were as frequent almost as debates, calls as committee meetings. Evening after evening was beguiled with wine and tobacco and easy wit and chat. The delegates learned to know and understand each other as men do who are upon terms of intimacy; made happy and lasting friendships among the people of the hospitable place; drank in impressions which broadened and bettered their thinking, almost as if they had actually seen the several colonies with whose representatives they were dealing from day to day; and went home with a cleared and sobered and withal hopeful vision of affairs. It was well to have their views so steadied. Events moved fast, and with sinister portent. Massachusetts could not be still, and quickly forced affairs to an issue of actual revolution. Before the Congress met again her leaders had irrevocably committed themselves to an open breach with the government; the people of the province had shown themselves ready to support them with extraordinary boldness; and all who meant to stand with the distressed and stubborn little commonwealth found themselves likewise inevitably committed to extreme measures. The Massachusetts men not only deeply resented the suspension of their charter, they denied the legal right of Parliament to suspend it. On the 9th of September, 1774, four days after the assembling of the Congress at Philadelphia, delegates from Boston and the other towns in Suffolk County in Massachusetts had met in convention and flatly declared that the acts complained of, being unconstitutional, ought not to be obeyed; that the new judges appointed under the act of suspension ought not to be regarded or suffered to act; that the collectors of taxes ought to be advised to retain the moneys collected, rather than turn them into General Gage’s treasury; and that, in view of the extraordinary crisis which seemed at hand, the people ought to be counselled to prepare for war,—not, indeed, with any purpose of provoking hostilities, but in order, if necessary, to resist aggression. They declared also for a provincial congress, to take the place of the legislative council of their suspended charter, and resolved to regard the action of the Congress at Philadelphia as law for the common action of the colonies.