It gave these resolutions very grave significance that the Congress at Philadelphia unhesitatingly declared, upon their receipt, that the whole continent ought to support Massachusetts in her resistance to the unconstitutional changes in her government, and that any person who should accept office within the province under the new order of things ought to be considered a public enemy. Moreover, the Suffolk towns did not stand alone. Their temper, it seemed, was the temper of the whole colony. Other towns took action of the same kind; and before the Congress at Philadelphia had adjourned, Massachusetts had actually set up a virtually independent provincial congress. General Gage had summoned the regular assembly of the province to meet at Salem, the new capital under the parliamentary changes, on the 5th of October, but had withdrawn the summons as he saw signs of disaffection multiply and his authority dwindle to a mere shadow outside his military lines at Boston. The members of the assembly convened, nevertheless, and, finding no governor to meet them, resolved themselves into a provincial congress and appointed a committee of safety to act as the provisional executive of the colony. The old government was virtually dissolved, a revolutionary government substituted. [Illustration: WASHINGTON STOPPING AT AN INN ON HIS WAY TO CAMBRIDGE] The substitution involved every hazard of license and disorder. A people schooled and habituated to civil order and to the daily practice of self-government, as the people of Massachusetts had been, could not, indeed, suffer utter demoralization or lose wholly and of a sudden its sobriety and conscience in matters of public business. But it was a perilous thing that there was for a time no recognized law outside of the fortifications which General Gage had thrown across Boston Neck, to defend the town against possible attack from its own neighbors. Town meetings and irregular committees took the place of officers of government in every locality. The committees were often self-constituted, the meetings too often disorderly and irregularly summoned. Everything fell into the hands of those who acted first; and inasmuch as the more hot-headed and violent are always at such times the first to act, many sober men who would fain have counselled restraint and prudence and the maintenance so far as might be of the old order, were silenced or overridden. The gatherings at which concerted action was determined upon were too often like mere organized mobs. Men too often obtained ascendency for the time being who had no claim upon the confidence of their followers but such as came from audacity and violence of passion; and many things happened under their leadership which it was afterwards pleasant to forget. No man of consequence who would not openly and actively put himself upon the popular side was treated with so much as toleration. General Gage presently found Boston and all the narrow area