Life of Count Rumford. 63 



tions, beginning with the minister and the squire of the 

 town, were, of course, the most powerful set among 

 the inhabitants ; and if they were unable to vindicate 

 him and protect him from outrage, and if even his 

 brother-in-law and other friends advised him to quit 

 the place, though he did not seek counsel from his 

 venerated father-in-law, we may well infer that his 

 apprehensions were not vain, whatever his own con- 

 sciousness of rectitude. 



There was something exceedingly humiliating and 

 degrading to a man of an independent and self-respect- 

 ing spirit in the conditions imposed at times by the 

 " Sons of Liberty," in the process of clearing himself 

 from the taint of Toryism. The Committees of Corre- 

 spondence and of Safety, whose services stand glorified 

 to us through their most efficient agency in a successful 

 struggle, delegated their authority to every witness or 

 agent who might be a self-constituted guardian of patri- 

 otic interests, or a spy or an eaves-dropper, to catch 

 reports of suspected persons. A case transpired in Mr. 

 Thompson's neighborhood of which he doubtless had 

 knowledge. The British troops in Boston being with- 

 out barracks, and the carpenters of that and the sur- 

 rounding towns being unwilling to build them, Gov- 

 ernor Gage had applied to Governor Wentworth to 

 send him workmen from New Hampshire for that 

 service. The latter engaged secret agents to execute 

 this commission. But the story leaked out, and the 

 Committee of Ways and Means at Portsmouth took 

 up the matter vigorously, and so thoroughly searched it 

 as to discover one of the Governor's secret agents in 

 this business, Nicholas Austin. The " Sons of Lib- 

 erty " summoned the delinquent before them on the 



