Relying upon the steady loyalty of the colonists, and their pecuniary ability, the advisers of the king looked to them for unceasing and substantial aid in replenishing the exhausted exchequer. Hitherto many of the commercial regulations had been evaded; now a rigid enforcement of the revenue laws was commenced. By the advice of Bute the king determined to "reform the American charters." Secret agents were sent to traverse the colonies for the purpose of ascertaining the temper of the people, of conciliating men of wealth and influence, and of obtaining such information as might be useful to ministers in preparing a plan for drawing a portion of the surplus wealth of the Americans into the imperial treasury. The first reform measure was the issuing of Writs of Assistance to revenue officers. These were warrants to custom-house officials, giving them and their deputies a general power to enter houses and stores where it might be suspected that contraband goods were concealed. This was a violation of one of the dearest principles of Magna Charta which recognizes the house of every Briton as his castle. The idea of such latitude being given to "the meanest deputy of a deputy's deputy" created general indignation and alarm. It might cover the grossest abuses, and no man's privacy would be free from the intrusions of these ministerial hirelings. The colonies saw in this the budding germ of despotism, and resolved to oppose its growth. The voice of James Otis the younger, a ripe scholar of six-and-thirty, and then the Advocate General of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, first denounced the scheme and declared the great political postulate which became the basis of all subsequent resistance to kingly domination, that "Taxation, without Representation, is Tyranny." Like the deep and startling tones of an alarm-bell, echoing from hill to hill, his bold eloquence aroused the hearts of thinking men from the Penobscot to the St. Mary; and his published arguments, like an electric shock, thrilled every nerve in the Atlantic provinces. "Otis was a flame of fire," said John Adams, in describing the scene in the Massachusetts Assembly, when the orator uttered his denunciations. "With a promptitude of classical allusion and a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authority, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. The seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sown. Every man of an immensely crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take up arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child, Independence, was born. In fifteen years, that is, in 1776, he grew up to manhood, and declared himself free."
JAMES OTIS.
Poor Otis! The bludgeon of a ministerial myrmidon paralyzed his brilliant intellect, and he was not allowed to participate in the scenes of the Revolution which ensued. Just as the white banner of peace began to wave over his country, after a struggle of twenty years to which he gave the first impulse, an electric bolt from the clouds mercifully released his wearied spirit from its earthly thrall.
The people were now fairly aroused. "Give us a just representation in the national council," they said, "and we will cheerfully submit to the expressed will of the majority." Great Britain was too proud to listen to conditions from her children; too blind to perceive the expediency of fair concession. She haughtily refused the reciprocity asked, and menaced the recusants. In the war just closed, the colonists had discovered their inherent strength, and they were not easily frightened by the mother's frown. Upon the postulate of Otis they planted the standard of resistance and boldly kept it floating on the breeze until the War of the Revolution broke out.
PATRICK HENRY.
Heedless of the portentous warnings already given, the British ministry conceived another scheme for taxing the Americans. The famous Stamp Act was elaborated in council, discussed in parliament, and made a law by sanction of the king's signature in the spring of 1765. That act imposed certain duties upon every species of legal writing. It declared invalid and null every promissory note, deed, mortgage, bond, marriage license, business agreement, and every contract which was not written upon paper, vellum, or parchment impressed with the stamp of the imperial government. For these, fixed rates were stipulated. In this measure the Americans perceived another head of the Hydra, Despotism. The Writs of Assistance touched the interests of commercial men; the Stamp Act touched the interests of the whole people. The principle involved was the same in each; the practical effect of the latter was universally felt. Fierce was the tempest of indignation which followed the annunciation of its enactment, and throughout the colonies the hearts of the people beat as with one pulsation. Sectional differences were forgotten. The bold notes of defiance uttered in New England and New York were caught up and echoed with manifold vehemence in Virginia. Patrick Henry, the idle boy of Hanover, had just burst from the chrysalis of obscurity, and was enchanting his countrymen with the brilliancy of his eloquence. He had been but a few days a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, when intelligence of the passage of the Stamp Act reached the Old Dominion. Upon a scrap of paper torn from the fly-leaf of an old copy of "Coke upon Littleton," he wrote those famous resolutions which formed the first positive gauntlet of defiance cast at the feet of the British monarch. The introduction of those resolutions startled the apathetic, alarmed the timid, surprised the boldest. With voice and mien almost superhuman in cadence and aspect, Henry defended them. In descanting upon the tyranny of the odious Act, he shook that assembly with alarm, and as he exclaimed in clear bell-tones of deepest meaning, "Cæsar had his Brutus—Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—" cries of "Treason! Treason!" came from every part of the House. Henry faltered not for an instant; but rising to a loftier altitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished the sentence with vehement emphasis—"George the the Third—may profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most of it." The resolutions were adopted, and from that day Massachusetts and Virginia were the head and heart of the American Revolution.
We will not tarry to notice the various measures subsequently adopted by the British Government to tax the Americans without their consent, and the scenes of excitement which every where prevailed in the colonies. The taxes imposed were light, some of them almost nominal; the colonists complained only of the principle involved in the avowal of government, that it possessed the right to impose taxes without the consent of the governed. This was the issue, and both parties were unyielding. For ten years the people complained of wrongs, petitioned for redress, and suffered insults. They were forbearing, because they were fond of the name of Englishmen. The mother country was blind, not voluntarily wicked. The British ministry did not deliberately counsel the king to oppress his subjects, for he would have spurned such advice with indignation; yet the measures which they proposed, and which the king sanctioned, accomplished the ends of positive tyranny and oppression. Forbearance, at length, became no longer a virtue, and, turning their backs upon Great Britain, the Americans prepared for inevitable war. They understood the maxim of revolutionists, that "in union there is strength." A spontaneous desire for a continental council was every where manifested. Its proposition by the Massachusetts Assembly was warmly responded to. The people met in primary assemblies, appointed representatives, and on the 5th of September, 1774, forty-three delegates from twelve colonies assembled in convention, in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia. Others soon came, and the first Continental Congress began its labors.