But not every one viewed it abstractly. The measure affected the merchants, whose sensibilities were still raw from the effects of the Sugar Act, and the lawyers and printers, men whose views could easily be spread broadcast over America. All that was needed was some one to give point to the feeling of resentment. The man who did it was Patrick Henry, of Virginia, the hero of the "Parsons' Cause." Although he was one of the newest members of the House of Burgesses, no sense of deference to the older legislators held him back. He had just discomfited them by stumbling upon and revealing some of their financial misdealing, and he was ready to upset them again, if he could. Moreover, he seems to have realized that the Stamp Act presented him with another opportunity to make himself famous, as the "Parsons' Cause" had done before. On May 29, 1765, in spite of the opposition of the conservatives, the House of Burgesses passed some resolutions which he had introduced. It is hard to tell whether the whole list passed or not, and it really makes little difference. They were all published as the Virginia Resolutions, in newspapers in all the colonies, and their results in influencing public opinion could have been no greater if they had all been strictly official.

The Resolutions declared, in brief, that the Englishmen in Virginia were entitled to all the rights of any Englishmen. The distinguishing feature of British freedom, Henry argued, was the fact that Englishmen taxed themselves, through their representatives, and that the Virginians enjoyed that right through the House of Burgesses. He concluded with the assertion that every attempt to deprive the people of this right tended to destroy their liberty, and that the Virginians owed no obedience to any tax laws passed by any body other than the House of Burgesses.

In Massachusetts the first formal action came on June 8th, when the House of Representatives sent out an appeal for a meeting of delegates from the various colonies at New York, for the purpose of formulating a united protest against the Stamp Act. The time suggested was the following October, the month before the Stamp Act was to go into effect. At the time appointed delegates from nine of the colonies met in the so-called Stamp Act Congress in New York, but weeks before that, plans were being worked out to defeat the measure by other means.

Inspired by the Virginia Resolutions, the opponents of the Stamp

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Act in Massachusetts carried their theories over into action. In that colony there were two riots, on August 14th and 26th, the first of which had all the appearance of being, not the work of an irresponsible group of trouble makers, but a deliberately planned and carefully executed demonstration. As a result, the Stamp Distributor for Massachusetts, Andrew Oliver, was compelled to resign. On August 26th the mob broke loose again, this time with more appearance of spontaneity. After a number of minor depredations, they wound up by an attack on the home of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, one of the most conspicuous of the conservative politicians in the province. After throwing everything portable out of the house, the mob smashed the windows and doors, leaving only the walls and the roof undamaged. Perhaps the most serious blow to Hutchinson was the loss of a large part of his invaluable collection of historical material. Leaving these papers out of account, the property damage alone was estimated at £5,000.

This violence in Massachusetts set the fashion for the other colonies. In New York the first rioting took place on October 17th, in North Carolina October 19th, in Virginia October 30th, and so on. One by one the Stamp Distributors were forced to resign, and there were various kinds of hostile demonstrations against the law, all designed to intimidate the officials so that it could not be enforced. At first this rioting was looked upon with approval by the privileged, enfranchised classes in the colonies. They had a mission to perform, the defeat of the Stamp Act, and they were willing to use as allies the artisans and laborers, with whom they did not ordinarily associate. But after a few examples of what the mob could do the property owners began to foresee certain possible consequences not at all pleasing to them. A little rioting might be good, provided it were directed against the British government. Suppose, however, that the mob should decide to embark upon a program of its own? In several of the colonies there were numerous indications that the rioters expressed too keen a love of destruction for its own sake. And when the classes of little property and no political advantages were destroying the property of others in the name of liberty, the situation was precarious. The privileged classes began to realize that "liberty and no taxation" might be used against themselves, just as they were using it against the Grenville experiment. The Stamp Act, therefore, raised a very interesting question: could the privileged classes main

tain "their privileges against royal encroachment from above without losing them by popular encroachments from below?" A political revolution against the British government might well mean a social revolution in the colonies. The doctrine of the rights of men and of Englishmen, proclaimed with so much zeal by Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and Christopher Gadsden, sounded well to those who possessed neither rights nor property.

In their efforts to defeat the Stamp Act the leaders tried very interesting experiments with new political organizations, some of which were full of promise. In this group might be mentioned the federated society known as the "Sons of Liberty." The name seems to have been used first in Connecticut and New York, in November 1765, with reference to those radicals who were opposing both the Stamp Act and the privileged classes in the colonies. Then, likewise in New York, in January, 1766 the radicals launched a formal society of the same name. Its purpose was to prevent any one from using the stamps, by any means that seemed to be desirable. In February the New York Sons of Liberty appointed a committee to write to leading opponents of the Act in other parts of British North America, and they opened up correspondence with all the colonies from New Hampshire to South Carolina. This step was soon followed by the logical suggestion of a Congress, representing all the Sons of Liberty, but before this enterprising plan could be carried out, the repeal of the Stamp Act made further proceedings unnecessary.

In Boston, the active opponents of the Stamp Act followed the example of their fellows in New York and organized a local branch of the Sons of Liberty. The most prominent members were a few merchants and business men, one of the publishers of the Boston Gazette, and some political leaders, of whom Samuel Adams was one of the best known. Of those who were known to be members of the Sons of Liberty, several were likewise prominent leaders in the Boston Caucus Club, the medium through which Samuel Adams did much of his work. In fact, the Boston "Sons" represented about the same group, using the new name merely because of a temporary advantage.

The underlying purpose of the Sons of Liberty was to fuse together into a single political organization all the opponents of the new British colonial policy. Had this been done, a tremendously powerful impetus could have been given, not only toward common action, but toward colonial union. It takes time to win support for any such

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great undertaking, and it required nine years' more work to achieve this aim. But the First Continental Congress, of 1774, actually did complete the process of organizing a colonial-wide political party of radicals, which the Sons of Liberty had first proposed.

In all this work of staging demonstrations, organizing committees, and projecting colonial congresses, the immediate objective was the nullification of the Stamp Act itself, and this purpose the radicals achieved. The Distributors had been forced to resign before the measure went into effect, and after they were out, there were few individuals who would run the risk of a mob attack by attempting to handle the Stamps. By the early part of 1766 in practically all the colonies business was proceeding as usual without Stamps. Newspapers were published without Stamps, customs officials issued clearance papers without them, and even lawyers and courts of justice transacted their business almost as though the law had never been passed.

Realizing the hopelessness of the contest, the Grenville faction in the British government gave way to the Rockingham Whigs, and in 1766, the new Cabinet put through the repeal of the measure. The colonial radicals had given a pointed illustration of some of their theories of government, with particular reference to the matter of taxation, and in so doing they had won a spectacular victory. After this exhibition of colonial strength, there was really little point in arguing about the legal rights of Parliament over the colonies. No matter how often those rights had been exercised in the past, and no matter how sound they were, in principle, they could not remain in force. For practical purposes the fact of colonial opposition was worth infinitely more than the theory of British law.

Even this contest over the Stamp Act, serious though it was, would not by itself have disrupted the British Empire. The colonies might have been retained, but only on one condition: that American views regarding legislation and taxation be allowed to prevail. If something like the Canadian system of government, with its complete political and financial independence, could have been worked out, the colonies would probably have been satisfied. But the need of revenue was acute, and even though the Grenville régime had passed, there were other British ministers who still insisted upon tapping colonial sources of supply.

CHAPTER XV

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS

In the lively campaign against the Stamp Act, the grievances of the merchants over the molasses trade had almost dropped out of sight, and they were not revived when the more exciting contest was over. This inaction on their part could not be attributed to any feeling of contentment under the burdensome restrictions. But in the widespread manifestations of mob activity they could see certain new social and political forces which were far more dangerous to the established order than the Acts of Parliament. The merchants had very little interest in abstract theories concerning the rights of man, but they did have robust convictions about the "rightful" position of the ruling class. This position they saw menaced, seriously, by the newly-found attitude of the populace toward the political dogma of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. While the merchants wanted commercial reform, they did not care to get democracy along with it, something which might be forced upon them unless the unfran-' chised classes could be put back into their "place."

If the British government could have learned the lesson of the Stamp Act, it would have abandoned all hope of a colonial revenue. In its own interest the best possible course would have been a tacit acceptance of the American argument, with a resumption of the former policy of seldom interfering in colonial matters. This would have left in British hands all the advantages accruing from the possession of colonies, without arousing troublesome questions concerning the nature and the rights of imperial sovereignty.

Perhaps true statesmen would have accepted defeat at the hands of the colonists as gracefully as the situation demanded, but the British government boasted few statesmen in those days. Hence even the Rockingham Whigs coupled with their repeal of the Stamp Act the high-sounding Declaratory Act, in which they proclaimed that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain in all cases whatsoever."