a still higher duty was to be exacted and retained. And stamp duties were to be paid throughout all the British American colonies, on and after the first day of the coming November.

These laws were to be enforced, not by the regular authorities only, but by naval and military officers, irresponsible to the civil power in the colonies. The penalties and forfeitures for breach of the revenue laws were to be decided in courts of vice-admiralty, without the interposition of a jury, by a single judge, who had no support whatever but from his share in the profits of his own condemnations.

1765.

May.

It was held that the power of parliament, according to the purest whig principles, was established alike over the king and over the colonies; but, in truth, the stamp act was the harbinger of American independence, and the knell of the unreformed house of commons.

1765. April.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DAY-STAR OF THE AMERICAN UNION.

APRIL-MAY, 1765.

IF the British parliament can tax America, it may tax Ireland and India, and hold the wealth of the east and of the west at the service of its own septennial oligarchy. As the relation of the government to its outlying dominions would become one of power and not of right, it could not but employ its accumulated resources to make itself the master of the ocean and the oppressor of mankind. "This system, if it is suffered to prevail," said Oxenbridge Thacher, of Boston, "will extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world."

On the discovery of the new hemisphere, the tradition was spread through the old that it conceals a fountain. whose waters have power to restore age to its prime. The tradition was true; but the youth to be renewed was the youth of society; the life to bloom afresh was the life of the race. Freedom, thy brow,

Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred

With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs

Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;

They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. Here, in the western world, the ancient warrior, "twin-born with man," counselled by the ripened wisdom of thousands of years, will renovate his being, and guide the people of every tongue through the self-direction of the individual mind to the harmonious exercise of the collective reason of the state.

Massachusetts had been led to rely on the inviolability of

English freedom and on the equity of parliament; and, when the blow fell, which, though visibly foreshown, had not been certainly expected, "the people looked upon their liberties as gone." Tears," said Otis, "relieve me a moment;" and, repelling the imputation "that the continent of America was about to become insurgent," "it is the duty of all," he added, "humbly and silently to acquiesce in all the decisions of the supreme legislature. Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of the colonists will never once entertain a thought but of submission to our sovereign, and to the authority of parliament in all possible contingencies." "They undoubtedly have the right to levy internal taxes on the colonies." 66 From my soul, I detest and abhor the thought of making a question of jurisdiction."

1765.

May.

On learning the decision of parliament, Hutchinson made haste to say that "it could be to no purpose to claim a right of exemption, when the whole body of the people of England were against it." He was only "waiting to know what more parliament would do towards raising the sums which the colonies were to pay," and which as yet were not half provided for. As chief justice, he charged "the jurors and people" of the several counties to obey. Nor did the result seem doubtful. There could be no danger but from union; and "no two colonies," said he, "think alike; there is no uniformity of measures; the bundle of sticks thus separated will be easily broken." "The stamp act," he assured the ministry, five weeks after the news of its passage, "is received among us with as much decency as could be expected; it leaves no room for evasion, and will execute itself."

In Boston, the annual election of representatives in May excited the passions of the people. Men called to mind the noble sentiments which had been interwoven into the body of the remonstrances of New York. They were embittered at the thought that their legislature had been cajoled by Hutchinson into forbearing to claim exemption from taxation as a right; and that yet their prayer had been suppressed by the ministry with impartial disdain. While the

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patriots, on the one side, censured the fatal acquiescence of Otis, as a surrender of their liberties, the friends of ernment jeered at his strange moods, and called him a Massaniello and a madman. In the gloom that was thickening around him, he repelled the insult with scorn. "The divine Brutus," said he, "once wore the cloak of a fool and a madman; the only cloak a man of true honor and spirit condescends to put on." And to merited reproaches he answered like one who could find no consolation: "Tell me, my once dear friends, what I have got by all this, besides the curse causeless of thousands, for whose welfare my heart has bled yearly, and is now ready to burst? Were it lawful to get at the cause of all your calamities, I would leap like the roe to purchase your ransom with my life or his."

1765. May.

The town of Boston remained faithful to the most genial of its patriots, and showed him honor, so long as he retained enough of the light of reason to be sensible of its support. Opinion was fermenting at the north, but as yet without a declared purpose in action. Virginia received the stamp act with consternation. At first the planters foreboded universal ruin; but soon they resolved that the act should recoil on England: articles of luxury of Eng lish manufacture were banished; and thread-bare coats came into fashion. A large provincial debt enforced the policy of thrift. The legislature of Virginia was then assembled; and the electors of Louisa county had just filled a vacancy in their representation by making choice of Patrick Henry. He had resided among them scarcely a year, but his benignity of temper, pure life, and simple habits had already won their love. Devoted to their interest, he never flattered the people, and was never forsaken by them. As he took his place, not yet acquainted with the forms of business in the house or with its members, he saw the time for the enforce ment of the stamp-tax drawing near, while all the other colonies, through timid hesitation or the want of opportu nity, remained silent, and cautious loyalty hushed the experienced statesmen of his own. More than half the assembly had made the approaching close of the session an excuse for returning home; but Patrick Henry disdained submission.

1765.

May.

Alone, a burgess of but a few days, unadvised and unassisted, in an auspicious moment, of which the recollection cheered him to his latest day, he came forward in the committee of the whole house; and while Thomas Jefferson, a young collegian, from the mountain frontier, stood outside of the closed hall, eager to catch the first tidings of resistance, and George Washington, as is believed, was in his place as a member, he maintained by resolutions that the inhabitants of Virginia inherited from the first adventurers and settlers of that dominion equal franchises with the people of Great Britain; that royal charters had declared this equality; that taxation by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, was the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom and of the constitution; that the people of that most ancient colony had uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own laws respecting their internal polity and taxation; that this right had never been forfeited, nor in any other way given up, but had been constantly recognised by the king and people of Great Britain.

It followed from these resolutions, and Patrick Henry so expressed it in a fifth supplementary one, that the general assembly of the whole colony have the sole right and power to lay taxes on the inhabitants of the colony, and that any attempt to vest such power in any other persons whatever tended to destroy British as well as American freedom. It was still further set forth, yet not by Henry, in two resolutions, which, though they were not officially produced, equally imbodied the mind of the younger part of the assembly, that the inhabitants of Virginia were not bound to yield obedience to any law designed to impose taxation upon them other than the laws of their own general assembly; and that any one who should, either by speaking or writing, maintain the contrary, should be deemed an enemy to the colony.

A stormy debate arose, and many threats were uttered. Robinson, the speaker, already a defaulter, Peyton Randolph, the king's attorney, and the frank, honest, and independent George Wythe, a lover of classic learning, accustomed