190 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
system, set in operation by Samuel Adams in 1772, 
was one of the strongest among the organizing forces 
that brought into existence the Federal Union. But 
my point now is that the action of these committees of 
correspondence expressed the deliberate sense of the 
commonwealth as truly as any act of legislature could 
have expressed it. 
There is something eloquent and touching in the 
stained and yellow records of those old town-meetings. 
When it was known that the ships were coming, Bos- 
ton asked advice of all the other towns. “ Brethren, 
we are reduced to this dilemma, either to sit down 
quiet under this and every other burden that our ene- 
mies shall see fit to lay upon us, or to rise up and re- 
sist this and every plan laid for our destruction, as 
becomes wise freemen. In this extremity we earnestly 
request your advice.” 
Some of the replies from the mountain villages are 
worth recording. The farmers of Lenox said, “ As we 
are in a remote wilderness corner of the earth, we 
know but little; but neither nature nor the God of 
nature requireth us to crouch, Issachar-like, between 
the two burdens of poverty and slavery.” The farm- 
ers of Petersham were concerned to think of the risk 
that Boston was assuming, exposed as she was to the 
fire of a British fleet. “The time may come,” they 
said, “when you may be driven from your goodly heri- 
tage; if that should be the case, we invite you to 
share with us in our small supplies of the necessaries 
of life, and should we still not be able to withstand, 
we are determined to retire and seek repose amongst 
the inland aboriginal natives, with whom we doubt 
not but to find more humanity and brotherly love than 
