"for?" and struck up the gun of one of the
soldiers who was loading again; whereupon they
seemed confounded, and fired no more. (See Wil-
liam Wyat's deposition, No.54.)

This is the whole of what the Boston Narra-
tive calls the horrid Massacre. How far it de-
serves that appellation, let the unprejudiced reader
judge. For my part, I cannot but think it a
very gross abuse of language, and highly inju-
rious to the unhappy officer and soldiers who were
concerned in this affair, to call it by the same
name that has heretofore been used to describe
such wanton, unnecessary, and premeditated acts
of general destruction as the slaughter of the
Protestants of France in the year 1572, and of
the Protestants of Ireland in 1641; to which a
resistance made by twelve soldiers against more
than an hundred people armed with sticks and
bludgeons, in defence of a post which it was their
duty to defend, seems to me to bear no resem-
blance.

I shall mention but slightly what happened
after the soldiers had fired, as it is not material
to the justification of their conduct in the act of
firing, which is the ground for charging them
with the perpetration of a horrid massacre. As
soon as the firing was over, all the bells of the
town were set a ringing, (whereas before the fir-
ing only one of them had been rung,) and the
inhabitants gathered together in vastly greater
numbers than before; and on the other hand the
soldiers drew out from their barracks in proper