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 troops. Bernard replied, with disconcerting neatness, that if the wind lay in that quarter, though he could not remove the troops he would gladly remove the legislators. Accordingly in the middle of June, 1769, he transported the General Court, loudly protesting, to Harvard College, placing the Council in the “philosophy chamber” of the new Harvard Hall (which, by the way, he had himself designed) and the House in Holden Chapel.

The opening of the session was a memorable event. As soon as the members had, most unwillingly, taken their seats, the undergraduates, attracted by a mixture of curiosity and patriotism, crowded into every remaining space, and James Otis (H. C. 1743), then leader of the House, seized the opportunity to deliver one of his most telling orations. He harangued his unusual audience, says his biographer, “with the resistless energy and glowing enthusiasm that he could command at will; and in the course of his speech took the liberty, justified by his successful use of it, as well as by the peculiarity of the occasion, to apostrophize the ingenuous young men who were then spectators of their persecution. He told them the times were dark and trying; that they might soon be called on, in turn, to act or suffer. He made some rapid, vivid allusions to the classic models of ancient patriotism, which it now formed their duty to study, as it would be hereafter to imitate. Their coun-