without orders, upon the crowd only when it had become necessary in defence of their lives. Captain Preston (October 24) and the soldiers (November 27) engaged in the affray were brought to trial on a charge of murder, and were all acquitted, except two soldiers who were convicted of manslaughter. These were slightly branded, and all of them were liberated. John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., appeared in their defence, and with equal honor the jurors did their duty in accordance with the law and the evidence. The news of the events of March 5 became known in London April 21, through Mr. Robertson. one of the commissioners of the customs.[112] [Illustration: THE COURT AT THE TRIAL A fac-simile of a group of original autographs belonging to the writer of this chapter. Winthrop was the clerk of the court. The Attorney-General Sewall drew the indictment, but did not appear for the king.—ED.] The Townshend act, though drawn conformably to the colonial distinctions between internal and external taxes, produced the same dissatisfaction as the Stamp Act had done. There was no real difference. If Parliament could lay external taxes, it could lay internal taxes. Non-importation agreements in the several colonies followed in 1769, and so long as they were observed, even without great strictness, were disastrous to British merchants, the value of whose exports to the American colonies between Christmas in 1767 and Christmas in 1769 fell off nearly £700,000 sterling; or, if we take the figures for those colonies where the agreement was most effective, in New England from £419,000 to £207,000, in New York from £482,000 to £74,000.[113] Though the agreement was not observed equally in all the colonies, nor in entire good faith in any,—Massachusetts and Rhode Island, particularly, suffered some discredit in this respect, as compared with New York and Philadelphia,—the general result seriously alarmed British merchants, who petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the Townshend act.[114] These petitions were considered in the House of Commons March 5, 1770, and Lord North, in accordance with Earl Hillsborough's circular letter, proposed to take off all the duties laid by the Townshend act of 1767, except that on tea, which he would preserve as a sort of declaratory act, especially since the conduct of the Americans had been such as to prevent an entire compliance with their wishes.[115] Governor Pownall offered as an amendment the entire repeal of the act, and supported his motion in an extremely able and interesting speech.[116] [Illustration: THE COUNSEL OF THE GOVERNMENT AND OF THE ACCUSED A fac-simile of a group of signatures belonging to the writer of this chapter.—ED.] Pownall's amendment was lost by a vote of 204 to 142. The merchants failed to procure a repeal of the duties, although Alderman Trecothic made one more effort in their behalf, on the 9th of April, "in a very sensible speech."[117]