Three months after this, when the Boston Port Bill was in agitation, and two months later, when it had passed Parliament, the farmers of Concord took a bolder tone,--“conscious,” as they said in town-meeting, “of no alternative between the horrors of slavery, and the carnage and desolation of a civil war,” except non-importation of British goods, to which the good citizens bound themselves. Still later, in a county convention which met in Concord, August 31, 1774, it was resolved: “That we by no means intend to withdraw our allegiance from our gracious Sovereign; that when our ancestors emigrated from Great Britain, charters and solemn stipulations expressed the conditions, and what particular rights they yielded; what each party had to do and perform, and what each of the contracting parties were equally bound by. Therefore a debtor may as justly refuse to pay his debts, because it is inexpedient for him, as the Parliament deprive us of our charter privileges, because it is inexpedient to a corrupt administration for us to enjoy them.... And a sense of our duty as men, as freemen, as Christian freemen, united in the firmest bonds, obliges us to resolve that every civil officer in this Province, now in commission, and acting in conformity to the late act of Parliament, is not an officer agreeable to our charter--_therefore unconstitutional, and ought to be opposed_.... As we are resolved never to submit one iota to the Act, we will not submit to courts thus constituted, and acting in conformity to said Act.... In consequence of this resolve, all business at the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, and Court of General Sessions of the Peace, next to be holden in Concord, _must cease_.”