He drafted papers which were, one after the other, adopted by the Massachusetts Assembly. The first was a letter of remonstrance, addressed to the colony's agent in London, and intended to be made public. It protested, in words seven times revised by the Assembly, against the proposed measures. Similar letters were sent to members of the ministry and leaders of English opinion. Another letter was addressed to the king. Of the success of this, Adams apparently had little hope, for when his daughter remarked that the paper might be touched by the royal hand, he replied, "More likely it will be spurned by the royal foot." The final one of these state papers was a circular letter addressed to "each House of Representatives or Burgesses on the continent." This expressed the opinion of Massachusetts upon the new laws, and invited discussion. That nothing in this should be considered underhanded, a copy of the circular letter was sent to England. It is significant that at the same time the new revenue commission sent a secret letter to England, protesting against New England town meetings, "in which the lowest mechanics discussed the most important points of government with the utmost freedom,"[20] and asking for troops. This begins the series of misrepresentations and complaints which, constantly sent secretly to England, became a leading cause of trouble. The working of the old colonial system is here seen in its perfection. Believing in the right to tax and punish, the Ministry appointed officers of the same belief. These men, finding themselves in hot water in Boston, were annoyed and perhaps truly alarmed, and constantly urged harsher measures and the sending of troops. The ministry, listening to its own supporters, and disbelieving the assertions of the American Whigs, more and more steadily inclined toward severity. Perhaps no falser idea was created than that Boston was riotous. Says Fiske: "Of all the misconceptions of America by England which brought about the American Revolution, perhaps this notion of the turbulence of Boston was the most ludicrous." One of the most serious also. The chief cause was in the timorousness of Bernard, the governor. On the occasion of the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, when, as Hutchinson said, "We had only such a mob as we have long been used to on the Fifth of November," Bernard wrote that there was "a disposition to the utmost disorder." As a crowd reached his house, "There was so terrible a yell it was apprehended they were breaking in. It was not so; however, it caused the same terror as if it had been so." That such a letter should have any effect on home opinion is, as Fiske says, ludicrous. Yet the mischief caused by these reports is incalculable. "It is the bare truth," says Trevelyan, "that his own Governors and Lieutenant-Governors wrote King George out of America."[21]