Opposition in Massachusetts

The agents of the colonies in England remonstrated with Grenville concerning the proposed stamp tax, when he told them that if they could devise a better scheme for raising a revenue, he would be satisfied. The revenue must be raised, and he knew of no better method than the one proposed. In the House of Commons he made similar remarks, and stated that the consideration of the subject had been postponed, because there were some doubts about the right of Parliament to levy such a tax. He asserted the right, and called upon the Opposition to deny it if they thought it fitting. No one spoke but Mr. Beckford, who said: "As we are strong, I hope we shall be merciful." As the right was not denied, the matter resolved itself into a question of method.

The subject excited great feeling in the colonies. Public and private discussions ran high. Great questions that lie at the foundations of civil and natural rights were pondered thoughtfully. The people became divided in opinion, and the party names, afterward so familiar, of Whigs, Patriots, and Sons of Liberty on one side, and Loyalists and Tories on the other, now first came into vogue. Men and women, in every social condition, were found on each side in the division, and all professed loyalty to the crown and adherence to the British constitution. Thoughtful men saw in the measure prophecies of great changes in America. "If the colonist is taxed without his consent, he will, perhaps, seek a change," said Holt's New York Gazette, in May, 1764. "It is a menace of the rights of man; a challenge to a conflict for inalienable rights," said a writer in the Virginia Gazette. "The ways of Heaven are inscrutable. This step of the mother country, though intended to secure dependence, may produce fatal resentment and be subversive of that end," wrote Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, who, twelve years afterward, offered in the Continental Congress the resolution that the colonies were "free and independent States." The agent of Connecticut (Mr. Dyer), then in England, wrote: "If the colonies do not now unite, they may bid farewell to liberty, burn their charters, and make the best of thraldom." In Massachusetts, the voice of that stern Puritan and conscientious Christian gentleman, Samuel Adams, who was then a little more than forty years of age, was lifted up, with words of logic and defiance, against the measure; and he wrote the address of the citizens of Boston to the Massachusetts legislature, saying:

"There is no room for delay. Those unexpected proceedings may be preparatory to more extensive taxation; for if our trade may be taxed, why not our lands and everything we possess? If taxes are laid upon us in any shape, without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? This annihilates our charter right to govern and tax our-selves. We claim British rights, not by charter only; we are born to them. Use your endeavors that the weight of the other North American colonies may be added to that of this province, that by united application all may happily obtain redress."

So the Bostonians denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, and looked to the power of union for a redress of grievances. The patriots in other colonies were in accord with those of Massachusetts, and there was an universal expression of the sentiment: "If we are taxed without our consent--if we are not represented in the body that taxes us, and we submit, we are slaves." The resolution to resist took deep root in the hearts of multitudes of men and women in the colonies; and when the subject of a stamp tax was again presented to Parliament, there was very little difference of opinion in America concerning its unrighteousness. The words of Otis had again gone forth to electrify the American people, and put leading men in England into a thoughtful mood. With wonderful power and clearness of language he enunciated great principles, declared the loyalty of the colonies, and defined natural rights. The following sentences from the extraordinary pamphlet that contains them, will give an idea of its character:

"There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the law of nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given all men the right to be free. If every prince since Nimrod had been a tyrant, it would not prove a right to tyrannize. The administrators of legislative authority, when they verge towards tyranny, are to be resisted; if they prove incorrigible, they are to be deposed. Nor do the political and civil rights of the British colonists rest on a charter from the crown. Old Magna Charta was not the beginning of all things; nor did it rise on the borders of chaos out of the unformed mass. A time may come when Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the natural, inherent, and inseparable rights of the colonists as men and as citizens would remain, and, whatever became of charters, can never be abolished till the general conflagration. The world is at the eve of the highest scene of earthly power and grandeur that has ever been displayed to the view of mankind. Who will win the prize is with God. But human nature must and will be rescued from the general slavery that has so long triumphed over the species."

Thus spake the prophet. Lord Mansfield rebuked those in England who spoke of his utterances with contempt. They answered, "The man is mad." "What then?" answered the great jurist. "One madman often makes many. Massaniello was mad; nobody doubted it; yet, for all that, he overturned the government of Naples."