censures as in the praises which were lavished upon them. Among the English admirers of the _Farmer’s Letters_ was Edmund Burke, who gave his sanction to their principle. In America, the admiration and the gratitude of the people were expressed in almost every conceivable form. Thanks were voted to the Farmer by political associations, by town-meetings, by grand juries. The College of New Jersey conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. He became the favourite toast at public banquets. He was offered the membership of the choicest social clubs. On his entrance, one day, into a court-room, whither business called him, the proceedings were stopped in order to recognise his presence, and to make acknowledgment of the greatness and splendour of his services to the country. Songs were written in his praise. The last of the _Farmer’s Letters_ was published in February, 1768. In the following May, the new commissioners of customs arrived at Boston; in June, these commissioners, attempting to execute their odious office on John Hancock’s sloop, _Liberty_, were fiercely assaulted by the populace of Boston, and were driven for refuge to Castle William in Boston Harbour; whereupon Governor Bernard summoned thither General Gage with his troops from Halifax. Of these most ominous events in Boston, John Dickinson was an observer from his distant home on the Delaware; and even he, with all his deep loyalty and conscientious hesitation, was so stirred by them as then to utter what seems almost a ringing war-cry. Taking for his model Garrick’s _Hearts of Oak_--the air of which was then so familiar to every one--he wrote the stanzas which he christened _A Song for American Freedom_,--a bit of versification obviously the work of a man neither born nor bred to that business; yet being quickly caught up into universal favour under the endearing name of the _Liberty Song_, its manly lines soon resounded over all the land; and thenceforward, for several years, it remained the most popular political song among us.