164 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
other victims of the affray in King Street, commonly 
known as the “ Boston Massacre.” What we have to 
note especially in the paper is the fact that it expressly 
includes the Boston Tea Party among the reprehensi- 
ble riots of the time, and discerns no difference between 
its performance and the sacking of private houses by 
drunken ruffians. Furthermore, says Dr. Peabody, “the 
illegal seizure of the tea was in a certain sense parallel 
to the (so-called) respectable mob that in the infancy of 
the antislavery movement nearly killed Garrison, and 
made the jail his only safe place of refuge.” This com- 
parison makes Dr. Peabody’s view sufficiently explicit. 
In connection with the same affair of the Attucks 
monument, one of the most eminent historical scholars 
of Boston, Mr. Abner C. Goodell, in the course of a 
letter to the Boston Advertiser, said: “If the only les- 
son that the popular mind has derived from the disor- 
derly doings which preceded the Revolution is that 
they were the right things to be done and worthy of 
perpetual applause, it is high time that we adopt a 
rule never to mention such events as the affray in 
King Street and the destruction of the tea without 
expressions of unqualified disapprobation. Which of 
us would permit his sons to engage in such reprehen- 
sible proceedings to-day?” This, again, is sufficiently 
explicit. The act of the Tea Party is unreservedly 
condemned, and no consciousness is indicated of the 
points in which it differed from a chance affray. __ 
It would not be right to leave these expressions of 
opinion without further reference to the time when 
they were written. Extensive strikes, especially of, 
men employed on railroads, and accompanied with 
savage attempts at boycotting, had recently occurred 
