and lawful callings, and in compliance with what
they took to be their duty to the public as obe-
dient subjects of the crown, have been marked
out by advertisements in their public
news-papers
as traitors and enemies to their country and fit
victims to the fury of a licentious and deluded
populace. And as to the King's troops, who
were sent thither in October 1768, they have
been treated by these sons of liberty and well-dis-
posed persons (as they stile themselves)
with a
degree of cruelty that could not have been justi-
fied, and probably would not have been practiced
by them, towards prisoners of war of the nation
with which we are oftenest at enmity. For they
not only, upon the first arrival of these troops at
Boston, did every thing in their power to pre-
vent their having quarters assigned them, and to
oblige them to continue in camp, though the
rigour of the winter-season was beginning to be
felt; but they have ever since been traducing them
with the most scurrilous and abusive language,
and harrassing them with vexatious actions at
law for trifling trespasses occasioned by provoca-
tions designedly given by themselves in order to
draw them into difficulties; and with malicious
accusations, oftentimes intirely false and
always
overcharged; and with every other low and
spiteful device that rage and disappointment at the
check they received in their designs by the arrival
of those regiments at
Boston, could suggest. I
must add also the perversion of justice in the most
flagrant manner in their courts of judicature, so