There is no doubt that, in Massachusetts at least, most well-to-do persons considered the agitation at first to be merely political, the usual device of the “outs” against the “ins”; they laughed at the loud talk of some of the orators, and considered that it was put on for effect.[157] When, in addition to this, the cause of American rights was disgraced, year after year, by riots, murder, arson, and sedition, those who were entrusted with the responsibilities of office, however much they sympathized with the abstract principles that were upheld by the popular leaders, were prejudiced against the concrete application of them.[158] We should also remember that, down to the time of the battle of Bunker Hill, if not later, all parties united in the most loyal and devoted language. The rights that were claimed were not the rights of Man, but of “natural-born subjects of the king of Great Britain”; the king was always described as “the best and most generous of monarchs,” and separation was never mentioned as a possibility in any public utterance. War was looked forward to by some of the most eager as a means of bringing the ministry to terms, or as an unavoidable necessity if the unconstitutional taxation was persisted in; but, up to the very last, most men agreed with Richard Henry Lee, who said to Adams, as they parted after the first Continental Congress in 1774: “All offensive acts will be repealed--Britain will give up her foolish project.”[159] When the most ardent American patriots used this language, and used it sincerely, it is not remarkable that those who formed the opposing political party, who were conservative when these were the radicals, should have felt that they were bound by their duty to their king and country, or that they should also have felt that the disorderly actions and the factious attitude of some of the extreme patriots in Massachusetts and elsewhere were simply seditious. These convictions were undoubtedly strengthened by the abominable treatment which many of them personally received. They were not apt to look with greater favor upon a cause whose votaries had tried to recommend it to their liking by breaking their windows, plundering their houses, constantly insulting them, their wives and their daughters, to say nothing of tarring and feathering them, or of burning them in effigy. The penal measures imposed by the Parliament upon the town of Boston and the colony of Massachusetts had been brought upon themselves by the so-called patriots. One rather wonders at the slowness and mildness of the British government, and at their miserable inefficiency, than at any repressive measures that they undertook. They deserved to lose the colonies for their invincible stupidity, which led them from one blunder into another; they irritated when they ought either to have crushed or conciliated; they tried half-measures when vigorous action was necessary; they persisted in affronting all the other colonies