The varieties of cases
in which Perez' intervention as the only substitute for law in the
village was being constantly demanded, it would quite exceed my space
to enumerate. In addition to this, he had the military affairs of the
insurgent train-band to order, besides transacting business with the
agents of neighboring towns, and even with messengers from Shays, who
already had begun to call on the Berkshire towns for quotas to swell
the rebel forces, of which a regular military organization was now
being attempted.
An informal sort of constitutional convention at the tavern had
committed the general government of the town, pending the present
troubles, to a Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety,
consisting of Perez, Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps, but the two
latter practically left everything to Perez. There was not in this
improvised form of town government, singular as it strikes us,
anything very novel or startling to the people of the village,
accustomed as they were all through the war to the discretionary and
almost despotic sway in internal as well as external affairs, of the
town revolutionary committees of the same name. These, at first
irregular, were subsequently recognized alike by the Continental and
state authorities, and on them the work of carrying the people through
the war practically and chiefly fell.
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