flourish in the land; the inferior courts at least were sooner or
later opened in nearly every colony; and not infrequently
unstamped clearance papers were issued to shipmasters willing to
take the risk of seizure in London or elsewhere. Mr. John
Hancock, easily persuading himself that there should be no risk,
shipped a cargo of oil with the Boston packet in December. "I am
under no apprehensions," he wrote his London agent. "Should there
be any Difficulty in London as to Marshall's clearance, You will
please to represent the circumstances that no stamps could be
obtained, ...in which case I think I am to be justified, & am
not liable to a seizure, or even run any risque at all, as I have
taken the Step of the Law, and made application for clearance, &
can get no other."

Notwithstanding such practices, which were frequent enough, it
was a dull winter, with little profit flowing into the coffers of
Mr. Hancock, with low wages or none at all for worthy artisans
and laborers; so that it must often have seemed, as Governor
Moore said, "morally impossible that the people here can subsist
any time under such inconveniences as they have brought on
themselves." Such inconveniences became more irksome as time
passed, with the result that, during the cold and dreary months
of February and March, it became every day a more pressing
question, particularly for the poor, to know whether the bad
times would end at last in the repeal or the admission of the
tyrannical act.

Confronted with this difficult dilemma, the faithful Sons of
Liberty were preparing in April to assemble a continental
congress as a last resort, when rumors began to spread that