History of Northampton, Massachusetts, from its settlement in 1654;

1766.] DIVIDING THE COUNTY—HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE. 485
utmost tlirougliout the Commonwealth, and in the end
gain by violence what they did not succeed in accomplishing
by packing the Legislature. Nothing so inflamed the
people as the discussion by wily demagogues of their so-
called grievances, and no opijortunity was better fitted to
that end than these gatherings. Voting themselves lawful
and constitutional bodies—a formula that was never omitted—seems
to have endowed them in the minds of their
promoters, with supreme power. While there was nothing
pertaining to government that was not a grievance, their
principal and favorite method of redress was the stoppage
of the courts. It was the one thing the disaffected could
themselves accomplish. For the rest they must await the
formal action of the constituted government. In the same
breath they denounced lawlessness and decried the only
constituted means by which crime could be punished.
They belittled government in all that pertained to its functions,
and voted that the safeguards which protected property,
and made society possible, were grievances that ought
to be abated. By incendiary appeals they marshalled the
forces of rebellion, and mildly deprecated overt action. It
was a trick of the demagogues to work up the passions of
their followers to the simmering point, and then serenely
implore them not to boil over.
The Opening Cou- The first of tliese conventions that set the
vention. forces of the unruly in motion, convened
at Worcester, on the 15"' of August, five
weeks after the adjournment of the Legislature. A month
before the convention was held a paper was circulated
throughout the County of Worcester, which received thousands
of signatures. The subscribers bound themselves to
use their best endeavors to prevent the sitting of the Infe-
rior Court of Common Pleas or of any other court that
should attempt to take property by distress. They also
agreed to prevent any public sales of personal property
seized by distress, even at the risk of their lives and for-
tunes, till their grievances ^vere legally redressed. ^ In
this convention thirty-seven towns were represented : the
deplorable state of the times was enlarged upon, and a for-
1 McMaster's History of the People of the United States, vol. 1, p. 306.