England and her Colonies: House and Commons

The colonies received the news of these proposed measures with strong indignation. Massachusetts instructed her agent in London to deny the right of Parliament to impose duties and taxes on a people who were not represented in the House of Commons. "If we are not represented," said they, "we are slaves." A combination of all the colonies for the defence of their common interests was suggested.

Otis, who had published a pamphlet on Colonial Rights, seeing the tide of public indignation rising very high, inculcated "obedience" and "the duty of submission;" but this was not a doctrine which the Americans were then in a state of mind to listen to. Better suited to their feeling was Thacher's pamphlet against all Parliamentary taxation. Rhode Island expressed the same; so did Maryland, by the secretary of the province; so did Virginia, by a leading member of her House of Burgesses. Strong as the expression of resentment was in the colonies, addresses in a much milder strain were prepared to the king and Parliament from most of them, New York alone expressing boldly and decidedly the true nature of her feelings, the same tone being maintained by Rhode Island.

But the minds of the British monarch and his ministers were not to be influenced either by the remonstrances and pleadings of the colonies or their agents in London, or of their few friends in Parliament. Grenville, the minister, according to prearrangement, brought in his bill for collecting a stamp-tax in America, and it passed the House of Commons five to one, and in the House of Lords there was neither division on the subject nor the slightest opposition. This act was to come into operation on the 1st day of November of the same year. It was on the occasion of its discussion in the House of Commons that Colonel Barre, who had fought with Wolfe at Louisburg and Quebec, electrified the House with his burst of eloquence in reply to one of the ministers who spoke of the colonists as "children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence, and protected by our arms." "They planted by your care!" retorted Barre. "No; your oppression planted them in America. They nourished by your indulgence! They grew up by your neglect of them. They protected by your arms! Those sons of liberty have nobly taken up arms in your defence. I claim to know more of America than most of you, having been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal subjects as the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them should they ever be violated."

The day after the Stamp Act had passed the House, Benjamin Franklin, then in London as agent for Philadelphia, wrote the news to his friend Charles Thomson. "The sun of liberty," said he, "is set; you must light up the candles of industry and economy." "We shall light up torches of quite another kind," was the reply.