Perhaps a more heart-felt convulsion never reached a
country with the same degree of power and rapidity before, and never
may again. Pity for the sufferers, mixed with indignation at the
violence, and heightened with apprehensions of undergoing the same
fate, made the affair of Lexington the affair of the continent.
Every part of it felt the shock, and all vibrated together. A
general promotion of sentiment took place: those who had drank
deeply into Whiggish principles, that is, the right and necessity
not only of opposing, but wholly setting aside the power of the
crown as soon as it became practically dangerous (for in theory it was
always so), stepped into the first stage of independence; while
another class of Whigs, equally sound in principle, but not so
sanguine in enterprise, attached themselves the stronger to the cause,
and fell close in with the rear of the former; their partition was a
mere point. Numbers of the moderate men, whose chief fault, at that
time, arose from entertaining a better opinion of Britain than she
deserved, convinced now of their mistake, gave her up, and publicly
declared themselves good Whigs. While the Tories, seeing it was no
longer a laughing matter, either sank into silent obscurity, or
contented themselves with coming forth and abusing General Gage: not a
single advocate appeared to justify the action of that day; it
seemed to appear to every one with the same magnitude, struck every
one with the same force, and created in every one the same abhorrence.
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