From this letter, written, as it was, from the Governor of a province at the desire of its General Assembly, the people of England might have learned to think of the American as they did of the French sincerity. It is almost past credit that, amidst the earnest protestations it contains of a peaceable disposition in Mr. Trumbull and the rest of his coadjutors in the Government of Connecticut, they were meditating and actually taking measures for the capture of certain of the King’s forts, and the destruction of General Gage and his whole army, instead of quieting the minds of the people! Yet such was the fact. They had commissioned Motte and Phelps to draft men from the militia, if volunteers should not readily appear, for a secret expedition, which proved to be against Ticonderoga and Crown Point; and the treasurer of the colony, by order of the Governor and Council, had paid 1500_l._ to bear their expenses. Nay, even before the date of the above amiable epistle, Motte and Phelps had left Hertford on that treasonable undertaking, in which they were joined on the way by Colonels Allen and Easton. Nor was this the only insidious enterprise that they had to cover. The “good people” throughout the province, to the number of nearly 20,000, were secretly arming themselves, and filing off, to avoid suspicion, in small parties of ten and a dozen, to meet “their brethren” the Massachusets; not, however, with the view of “giving aid, should any unjustifiable able attack be made upon them,” but to “surprise” Boston by storm. In addition to the Governor’s letter, the mock-peacemakers, the General Assembly, had deputed Dr. Samuel Johnson, son of the Rev. Dr. Johnson, spoken of in this work, and Oliver Wolcott, Esq. both of the Council, which had ordered the 1500_l._ for the adventurers to Ticonderoga, to wait upon General Gage, the more effectually to amuse and deceive him into confidence and inaction. But happily, at a critical time, just before the intended storm and slaughter at Boston, the news of the success of the secret expedition reached the town, which fully discovered the true character and business of the two Connecticut ambassadors, and rendered it necessary for them, _sans cérémonie_, to retire from Boston, and General Gage immediately to render the fortifications at the Neck impregnable.