The Letter to your Council at Boston, inclosed in yours of the 5th of March is gone [on by the] Post. your reflections on the day of the date of your Letter are natural and just. It is a day that I myself have more reason to remember than any one of my Life. It is a day that occasioned me more obloquy and slander than any other or all the other Days I have beheld. It is a Day which brought me into the most critical Circumstances in which I ever stood, and in which, I will rejoice and glory in it to all Eternity I did my Duty with the most unequivocal and unshaken Integridity.

The Action of that night and the Tryals that were [oc]casioned by 14 it, opened the Eyes of the common People. It brought them acquainted with the Laws relative to Mobs, Riots and Seditions, of which they were before very ignorant. it convinced them that they only exposed their Lives to destruction by such irregular and ungenerous Attacks upon the soldiers: that they only endangered the Union of the Province and the Colonies, by venturing on such mad midnight Enterprizes: and that their only ultimate Resource must be in a formal and regular Resistance by Arms.1 Accordingly from that time, You saw them meeting not only in Boston but in all the neighbouring Towns, and exercising themselves in Arms.

A Lawyer who is my Friend, has put in a Plea in Abatement against The Defence of the American Constitutions. He says the Title is a Misnomer.2 And if the Title is understood to mean a Defence of the whole and all the Parts of those Constitutions I should agree with him. But it is only a Defence of them against one Assailant Mr Turgot and on one Point the Equilibrium of orders. The whole of the th[ree] Volumes is calculated to shew that equal Laws cannot be preserved without three independent orders forming a mutual Bal[lance] in the Legislature and between the Le[gislative and] Executive Power. I know of no Book in any Language, in which so m[uch] Information is to be found upon the subject. The English have made but dull Work of describing and defending their own Constitution. If I am not most miserably deceived by my own [va]nity, there are more Arguments in those Volumes in favo[ur] of their own Constitution, than their whole Language con[tained] before. in short if there is not Evidence enough in them to settle [the] Point forever, I shall despair of ever seeing any political quest[ion] decided.— you talk to me of “Gratitude to him who has taught them this important secret.” Gratitude is not a Delicacy too exquisite for me ever to receive or hope for. [Instead] of Gratitude I have received nothing but Abuse and Insolen[ce] for this Work, from the ignorant and the Profligate, and the wise and virtuous look on and are silent at le[ast,] if they do not Smile and applaud.

In short my Dear sir a Man who is concerned in a Revolution is greatly to be pitied. He must surrender h[is] Judgment and his Integrity into the hands of the Mob, or he must run the Gauntlet. so says the Experience of your Friend—if you’l allow me the Priviledge / and humble servant