8. The Boston Port Act and the Mass. Government and Administration of Justice Acts were presumably enclosed in one of BF’s notes in May, now missing, that are mentioned in his letter of June 1. Those most “lately pass’d” were the Quebec, the Quebec Revenue, and the Quartering Acts. For the first see idem and for the second the document following this one. The third, which became law on June 2, related to all the colonies but had particular significance for Massachusetts. It remedied ambiguities in the act of 1765, in the passage of which BF had played a part (above, XII, 106–7, 118–20). The new statute, 14 Geo. III, c. 54, empowered the governor, when available barracks were too far from the scene where troops were required, to requisition uninhabited structures in which to billet them. See Don R. Gerlach, “A Note on the Quartering Act of 1774,” New England Quarterly, XXXIX (1966), 80–8; Gipson, British Empire, XII, 130–2.

9. I.e., the letters BF had sent in 1772. One of the new ones was probably Hutchinson to Dartmouth, March 9, 1774, dealing with the attempt to impeach Peter Oliver, for this letter was published in the Boston Gaz. of Nov. 21, 1774.