"Our town is now a perfect garrison," the Patriots said, after the troops were posted, and the rough experiment on their well-ordered municipal life had fairly begun. It galled them to see a powerful fleet and a standing army watching all the inlets to the town,--to see a guard at the only land-avenue leading into the country, companies patrolling at the ferry-ways, the Common alive with troops and dotted with tents, marchings and countermarchings through the streets to relieve the guards, and armed men occupying the halls of justice and freedom, with sentinels at their doors. Quiet observers of this strange spectacle, like Andrew Eliot, wondered at the infatuation of the Ministry, and what the troops were sent to do; while the popular leaders and the body of the Patriots regarded their presence as insulting. The crown officials and Loyalist leaders, however, exulted in this show of force, and ascribed to it a conservative influence and a benumbing effect. "Our harbor is full of ships, and our town full of troops," Hutchinson said. "The red-coats make a formidable appearance, and there is a profound silence among the Sons of Liberty." The Sons chose to labor and to wait; and the troops could not attack the liberty of silence. The House of Representatives, on reviewing the period of the stay of the troops in Boston, declared that there resulted from their introduction "a scene of confusion and distress, for the space of seventeen months, which ended in the blood and slaughter of His Majesty's good subjects." The popular leaders, who repelled, as calumny, the Loyalist charge that they were engaged in a scheme of rebellion, said that to quarter among them in time of peace a standing army, without the consent of the General Court, was as harrowing to the feelings of the people, and as contrary to the constitution of Massachusetts, as it would be harrowing to the people of England, and contrary to the Bill of Eights and of every principle of civil government, if soldiers were posted in London without the consent of Parliament; in a word, that it was as violative of their local self-government as the Stamp Act or the Revenue Act, and was also an impeachment of their loyalty. They, therefore, as a matter of right, were opposed to a continuance of the troops in the town. The question of removal now became an issue of the gravest political character, and of the deepest personal interest; and a steady pursuit of this object, from October, 1768, to March, 1770, gave unity, directness, and an ever-painful foreboding to the local politics, until the flow of blood created a delicate and dangerous crisis.