admit that the reverential simplicity of rural life, however tinged by superstition, was ill exchanged for any liberality of opinions or polish of manners to be acquired in a camp. Yet the intermixture of troops from various colonies, must have tended to enlarge the circle of ideas, and partially to do away with local prejudices; while co-operation in a common object, had impressed upon the colonial mind the idea of union and a common interest.

The royal and proprietary governors, to obtain the necessary supplies, had been obliged to yield to perpetual encroachments. The expenditure of the great sums voted by the Assemblies had been kept, for the most part, in their own hands, or those of their specially appointed agents; and, contrary to what usually happens, executive influence had been weakened instead of strengthened by the war, or rather, had been transferred from the governors to the colonial Assemblies.

In the prosecution of hostilities, much of the hardest and most dangerous service had fallen to the share of the colonial levies, employed especially as scouts and light troops. Though exceedingly disgusted by the superiority always assumed by the British regular officers, and allowed them by the rules of the service, the long continuance and splendid successes of the war, had filled the colonies with a martial spirit, and the idea of martial force had grown familiar, as a method, at once expedient and glorious, of settling disputed points of authority and right.

With colonies thus taught their strength and resources, full of trained soldiers, accustomed to extraordinary efforts and partial co-operation, the British ministry now entered on a new struggle-one, of which all like former contests, were but as faint types and forerunners. It was proposed to maintain in America ten thousand troops as a peace establishment, nominally for the defense of the colonies; perhaps also, in fact, as a support to that superintending metropolitan authority, of which the weakness had been sensibly felt on various occasions during the war. The outbreak of the western Indians served, however, to show that some sort of a peace establishment was really necessary.

Four great wars within seventy years, had overwhelmed Great Britain with heavy debts and excessive taxation. Her

recent conquests, so far from relieving her embarrassments, had greatly increased that debt, which now amounted to £140,000,000, near $700,000,000. Even in the midst of the late struggle, in the success of which they had so direct an interest, the military contributions of the colonial Assemblies had been sometimes reluctant and capricious, and always irregular and unequal. They might, perhaps, refuse to contribute at all toward a standing army in time of peace, of which they would naturally soon come to be jealous. It seemed necessary, therefore, by some exertion of metropolitan authority, to extract from the colonies, for this purpose, a regular and certain revenue.

At the very commencement of the late war, the Board of Trade had proposed a scheme of parliamentary taxation for the colonies. In the course of the war, Pitt had intimated to more than one colonial governor, that, when it was over, the authority of Parliament would be exerted to draw from America the means for its own defense. Peace was no sooner established, than Pitt's successors in the ministry hastened to carry out the scheme thus foreshadowed.

That Parliament possessed a certain authority over the colonies, in some respects super-eminent, was admitted by all; but the exact limits of that authority had never been very accurately settled. As against the royal prerogative, the colonists had been eager to claim the benefits of English law; not the common law only, but all statutes, such as the Habeas Corpus Act, of a remedial and popular character. There were other statutes, however, the Mutiny Act, for instance, from which they sought to escape on the ground of non-extension to America. Against the interference of Parliament in matters of trade, most of the colonies, especially those of New England, had carried on a pertinacious struggle. In spite, however, of opposition, that interference had been extended from the trade of the colonies with foreign nations and each other, to many other matters but remotely connected with it. By the English post-office system, introduced into America, the transportation of mails and the rates of postage had been regulated. Parliament had interfered with the colonial currency, establishing the standard in coin, and restricting the issue of paper notes. Joint-stock companies, with more than a certain number of partners, had been

prohibited. The collection of debts had been regulated. A uniform law of naturalization had been established. Parliament had prohibited or restricted certain trades and manufactures, and had even assumed to legislate respecting the administration of oaths. All or most of these exertions of authority had been protested against at the time; but the colonists had yielded at last, and the power of regulating colonial trade for the exclusive benefit of the mother country, exercised for two or three generations, and sustained by a system of custom-house officers and Admiralty courts, had acquired, in spite of unpopularity and a systematic evasion still extensively practiced, the character and attributes of a legal vested right. (1763.)

The super-eminent power of all, that of levying taxes for revenue, Parliament had never exercised. The rates of postage, of which the payment was voluntary, might be considered not so much a tax as an equivalent for services rendered. The intercolonial duties on "enumerated articles," producing little more than sufficient to pay the expenses of the custom-houses, had for their professed object, not revenue, but the regulation of trade. The trifling surplus paid into the British treasury was but a mere incident to that regulation. Yet the colonial custom-houses, though hitherto maintained with no intention of collecting taxes, might easily be adapted to that purpose; and, as the colonists were already accustomed to the payment of parliamentary duties, they might not readily distinguish between duties for regulation and duties for revenue.

A part of the new scheme, as suggested to Parliament by Lord Grenville, Bute's chancellor of the Exchequer, appears to have proceeded on this idea. In spite of recent vigilance in the enforcement of the acts of trade, the Molasses Act was still extensively evaded. By reducing the duties exacted under that act, now about to expire, Grenville proposed to diminish the temptation to smuggle; and, while seeming thus to confer a boon on the colonies, by opening to them, under moderated duties, the trade with the foreign sugar islands, by the same process, to convert the Molasses Act from a mere regulation of trade, into a source of revenue, to be enhanced by duties on other foreign products. Had the proposition stopped here, there might have been some chance of gradually

forcing on the colonies the practice of parliamentary taxation. But the amount which could thus be raised would not suffice for the object in view, and Grenville proposed, in addition, a stamp tax-an impost, in several respects, much like those of the custom-house, and very like them in facility of collection. All bills, bonds, notes, leases, policies of insurance, papers used in legal proceedings, and a great many other documents, in order to be held valid in courts of law, were to be written on stamped paper, sold by public officers appointed for that purpose, at prices which levied a stated tax on every such document. Stamp duties, said to be an invention of the Dutch, though long familiar in England, were as yet almost unknown in America, where only one or two colonies had made some slight trial of them.

Shortly after the final treaty of peace, Grenville laid this plan before Parliament, not for immediate action, but by way of information and notice. The colonial agents, or some of them, wrote to America for instructions; but the public mind was engrossed by the sudden renewal of the war on the western frontier, and Grenville's proposition hardly attracted so much attention as might have been expected. The Assembly of Pennsylvania was content with simply stating a willingness to aid the crown according to their ability, whenever required in the usual constitutional manner." They even proposed to forward a plan by which all the colonies might be made to contribute fairly and equitably to the public defense; but that idea they soon abandoned.

Bollan, so long the agent of Massachusetts, had been lately dismissed, and the place given to Jasper Manduit, whose letters, containing an account of Grenville's proposals, were laid before the General Court at an adjourned session. There seems at this moment to have been a lull in the politics of that province. The excitement growing out of the question of writs of assistance had subsided. Hutchinson, who still sat in the council, in spite of Otis's attempt to exclude him, had a principal hand in drawing up the instructions to the agent. They suggested, indeed, the right of the colonists to tax themselves, but in a very moderate tone. It was even voted to send Hutchinson as a special agent to England; but this was prevented by Governor Bernard, who thought it irregu lar for the lieutenant-governor to be absent from the province.

At the next session of Parliament, Grenville, now prime minister, brought forward his scheme of taxation in a more formal shape. After a debate which excited very little interest or attention, the House of Commons resolved, without a division," that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies," and they recommended such a stamp act as the minister had proposed.

Further action as to this stamp tax was, however, delayed, to give the colonists an opportunity for suggesting, if they chose, some more satisfactory means for raising the half million of dollars which the minister required. The other part of the ministerial scheme was at once carried out by a law known as the "Sugar Act," reducing by one half, the duties imposed by the old Molasses Act on foreign sugar and molasses imported into the colonies; levying duties on coffee, pimento, French and East India goods, and wines from Madeira and the Azores, which hitherto had been free; and adding iron and lumber to the list of "enumerated articles," which could not be exported, except to England. Openly avowing in its preamble the purpose of "raising a revenue for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing his majesty's dominions in America," this act gave increased jurisdiction to the colonial Admiralty courts, and provided new and more efficient means for enforcing the collection of the revenue.

Partial accounts of these proceedings having reached Massachusetts previous to the annual election, the town of Boston took occasion to instruct its newly-chosen representatives to use all their efforts against the pending plan of parliament taxation, and for the repeal of any such acts already passed. These instructions, drafted by Samuel Adams, contained the first decided protest against Grenville's scheme. Among other things, they suggested the expediency of a combination of all the colonies for the defense of their common interests.

At the session which speedily followed, the House of Representatives resolved, "that the imposition of duties and taxes by the Parliament of Great Britain, upon a people not represented in the House of Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights." A pamphlet, lately published by Otis, "The Rights of the British Colonies asserted," was read and approved. A copy was transmitted to the agent in England, and along with it an energetic letter. "The silence