Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/141

 A.D.1775.]

quiet in their barracks, they should not be molested; but if they attempted to raise fortifications, or to cut off the town from the country, they should be stoutly opposed. When the news of the surprise of the forts on the Lake Champlain arrived, congress endeavored to excuse so direct a breach the peace by feigning a belief in a design of an invasion of the colonies from Canada, of which there was notoriously no intention; and they gave orders that an exact inventory of the cannon and military stores there captured should be made, in order to their restoration, "when the former