Meanwhile, on the twentieth of February the selectmen of Dartmouth were called on to choose an agent to defend the action against the Cuffe brothers. At their annual meeting on the eighth of March the Honorable Walter Spooner, a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention 1780, was chosen in behalf of the town to make answer to the petitioners in question. At the March meeting the case was continued and came up for action at the next meeting of the court. In the meantime, John and Paul Cuffe made a request to the selectmen of Dartmouth. In the Cuffe papers three such requests are preserved. The one dated the twenty-fourth of April is followed by a notation attesting it a true copy of the request delivered to the selectmen. It asks them to "put a stroak on your next Warrant for calling a town meeting so that it may legally be Laid Before said town By way of voat to know the mine of said town whether all free Negroes and molattoes shall have the same Privileges in this said town of Dartmouth as the white People have Respecting Places of profit choosing of officers and the Like together with all other Privileges in all cases that shall or may happen or be Brought in this said town of Dartmouth or that we have Reliefe granted us Joyntly from Taxation which under our present depressed circumstances and your poor Petitioners as in duty Bound shall ever pay." The disposition of the case as found in the records is contained in a few sentences. One is dated the eleventh of June and is signed by Richard Collens, constable. It reads as follows: Then received of John Cuffe eight pounds twelve shillings silver money in full for all John Cuffe and Paul Cuffe Rates until this date and for all my court charges received by me. Elijah Dean presented his bill for summoning the assessors. It was paid, and the bill with an acknowledgment from Edward Pope is entered in Cuffe's letter book with the tax receipt of the eleventh of June. The other laconic note is from the Records of the Court of General Sessions held at Taunton on June 12. It curtly "ordered that the Petition of Paul Cuffe and John Cuffe and the proceedings thereon be dismissed." Several writers have commented on the significance of the petitions of the Cuffe brothers and their resistance to the payment of taxes. Practically all of them overestimate the matter. For example, a representative writer says, "This was a day equally honorable to the petitioners and to the legislature; a day in which justice and humanity triumphed over prejudice and oppression; a day which ought to be gratefully remembered by every person of color within the boundaries of Massachusetts, and the names of John and Paul Cuffe, should always be united with its recollection."[13]