and plating forges worked by a tilt-hammer, were prohibited in the colonies as nuisances." No less than twenty-nine laws," says Sabine, "restricted and bound down colonial industry. They forbade the use of waterfalls, the erection of machinery, of looms and spindles; they set the king's arrow on trees that rotted in the forest; they defined the limitless ocean as a pathway to such of the lands it embosoms as wore the English flag."

And now, was not all this enough to satisfy English greed? Is it possible that it could be thought safe to add direct taxation, laid upon a people thus burdened with disabilities? Nothing so effectually demonstrates the folly of English legislation at this period, as the fact, that the parliament could not see when they had gone to the verge of endurance. For the theory of English taxation was this: that the subject gave his money to the king, by his representative in parliament. It had long been an axiom that taxation and representation went together; so that taxation without representation would be robbery. Ireland was not taxed by the English parliament. It was allowed a parliament of its own. This was the ground on which the colonists refused the Stamp Act; they had not voted it; they were not admitted to a voice where it was voted. They inhabited a distant country, from whence they could not attend. It was answered, that the great majority of Englishmen were not represented in parliament; as if one injustice warranted another; and as if the swarming millions to which American population would soon ascend, were always to submit to an English oligarchy. It is an unspeakable wonder that great English lawyers, with Mansfield at their head, could argue for the Stamp Act. But English legislation was guided by precedent, and by colorable precedent and legal fiction anything could be justified. Such was the insulting pretence, that America was virtually represented in Middlesex. Englishmen had so long governed Americans as if they were an inferior race, that they mixed contumely with every part of their enactments. They discriminated in favor of English birth, wherever appointments were to be made; denied promotion tocolonial officers of distinguished ability; and allowed a captain in the “regulars" to outrank a colonel in the "provincials." Long before this, they meditated introducing a hierarchy of churchmen, and

giving precedence to the established church. They actually created a nobility in Nova Scotia; they conferred legislative, executive, and judicial authority on the same persons; they planned to take away the New England charters; to consolidate British America by effacing old boundaries, and introducing aristocratic institutions everywhere. These things showed the animus of parliament. If taxation once began, who could say where it might end. Aware of colonial sensitiveness, it was resolved to proceed with extreme caution. The first step was to scatter an army of 10,000 men among the principal towns. At first these were to be paid from England. Then the colonists were enjoined to provide them with "salt, vinegar, and pepper." In time full rations would be secured. The navigation acts were to be enforced by a naval force hovering around the coast. Each commander might enrich himself by capturing offenders. But a more constant and reliable revenue was desired, and in September, 1763, preliminary steps were taken for extending to the colonies stamp duties already payable in Great Britain. George Grenville was then First Lord of the Treasury, but it is probable that Charles Jenkinson, First Secretary, drew the hateful act. The surprise and opposition which it encountered from Americans, then in England; from some English statesmen, and from some of his own secretaries, induced Grenville to postpone its introduction into parliament for a year, till America itself could be heard from. No sooner was it mentioned there, then it provoked animadversion. Holt's New York Gazette, of May 24, 1764, suggested that "the colonist might seek a change if taxed without his consent." Samuel Adams, in a paper adopted by the town of Boston, said, "If taxes are laid upon us in any shape, without having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced to the miserable state of tributary slaves? This annihilates our charter right to govern and tax ourselves." "The colonies," said a New York newspaper, " may submit to the impositions of ministerial power, but they will hate that, power as tyrannical, and as soon as they are able, will throw it off." Thus ominous were the first mutterings of the distant storm. But the king's speech on opening parliament, January 10, 1765, spoke of the American question as one of "obedience to the laws, and respect for legislative authority."

On the sixth of February, 1765, Grenville formally proposed, in the House of Commons, the details of a Stamp Act for America, and made all offenses against it cognizable, not in common courts, but courts of admiralty. Instead of being heard by a jury of his countrymen, the offender should stand before a judge paid by the crown. The authority of Charles York, eminent as a lawyer, assured the house that parliament had supreme authority over the colonies, which, he said, were only great corporations. Meanwhile, an army of officials in America, assured them the objections came only from a few fanatics, and it was resolved to proceed. The act passed the more readily, because the nation was provoked by the bold spirit of some in America.

Nobody in England doubted that the Stamp Act would be executed. The idea that a scattered population, such as they esteemed the Americans, would set at naught the authority of parliament, was too monstrous to be entertained. Even Franklin, then in London, expected submission, and he nominated a friend of his as stamp master in Connecticut. The most annoying consequences would attend those colonists who should venture to dispense with stamps. "Marriages would be null; notes of hand valueless; ships at sea prizes to the first British captain that should encounter them; suits at law impossible; transfers of real estate invalid; inheritances irreclaimable." Grenville afterward said, "he did not foresee opposition to the measure, and would have staked his life on obedience."

The Stamp Act, passed in March, was to go into execution November first. James Otis proposed a congress of delegates from the provincial assemblies, to meet at New York, October Ist, "to consult together." It met as proposed, and the delegates refused to claim what was due as provided by their charters; they insisted on natural rights. They used a high and manly tone in their address to parliament, chiefly arising from the spirit and vigor of Gadsden and Rutledge, of North Carolina. Meanwhile, those who had ventured to accept the office of stamp-master, in any colony, fared so hardly from the resentment of their fellow citizens, that before November came not one of them but had resigned. The act fell dead, for want of some one to execute it. "From New Hampshire to the far south, November first began with the tolling of muffled bells;

minute guns were fired; pennants hung at half-mast; eulogies were pronounced on liberty, and its knell was rung." In New York, Colden, the Lieutenant-Governor, who held the stamps, retired within the fort, and got a detachment of marines from a man-of-war lying near. In the evening, a vast torchlight procession came down Broadway, bearing the Governor's image, and that of the devil, seized the Governor's carriage, and transported the images upon it about the town, and finally burned the whole before his eyes. The next day Colden surrendered the stamps to the city authorities.

But "something more [than popular convulsions] was needed to incline England to relent; and the merchants of New York, coming together on the last day of October, unanimously bound themselves to send no new orders for goods or merchandise, to countermand all former orders, and not even to receive goods on commission, unless the Stamp Act were repealed. Thus a city, the chosen home of navigation, renounced all commerce; a people who as yet had no manufactures, gave up every comfort from abroad, rather than continue trade at the peril of freedom. The lobbies of the House of Commons, when they debated what to do with America, were thronged with three hundred merchants, engaged in American trade, and representing four millions sterling of American indebtedness, anxious and trembling, waiting almost till the winter morning's return of light, and hoping for the repeal of the Stamp Act. The importation of British goods fell off immensely during the winter of 1765-66. The whole mercantile community sympathized in the agony of America." All eyes in parliament turned toward William Pitt, the favorite and veteran statesman, who had steadily opposed this legislation which proved so disastrous, because he denied, as America had done, the right to tax where there was no representation. Old and sick and swathed in flannels, he spoke with the dignity of wisdom and the energy of conscious power. He examined the various arguments for the act, and pronounced them baseless. "I rejoice," said he," that America has resisted. If its millions of inhabitants had submitted, taxes would soon have been laid on Ireland. If ever this nation should have a tyrant for its king, six millions of Irishmen, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would be fit instruments to

make slaves of the rest." "On this ground of the Stamp Act, while so many here think it a crying injustice, your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man; she would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her."

But, even while parliament saw the necessity for so doing, it could not bow its pride to acknowledge the justice of the American claim, and after protracted reaffirmations by the great lawyers and orators of the ground on which they had proceeded, a resolution passed that "parliament had the right to bind the colonies by taxes and impositions, in all cases whatsoever."

moderated?"

On the 13th February, 1766, Franklin was called to the bar of the Commons to give testimony as to the expediency of repealing the Stamp Act. "Do you think, " said Grenville," that the people of America would pay the stamp duty if it was No, never! they never will submit to it!" May not a military force carry it into execution?" Franklin replied: "Suppose a military force sent into America; they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may, indeed, make "But suppose the duty to be laid on the necessaries of life." Franklin made the unexpected answer: "I do not know a single article imported into the northern colonies but what they can do without, or make for themselves."

On the 20th January, ministers settled the resolutions of repeal. Conway moved them in the house next day. After a night of speeches, the division took place, between one and two o'clock on the 22d. The lobbies were crowded with merchants anxious for the restoration of trade. Two hundred and seventy-five members voted for repeal, one hundred and sixtyseven for enforcing the act. The roof rang with cheers. Conway, as he came out, was hailed as a deliverer. Grenville was received with hisses. When Pitt appeared, the crowd pulled off their hats, and followed him home with benedictions.

The period during which the Stamp Act was actually in force was only four months. It is probable that not a single stamp was employed. The useless commodity was transported back