by an Act requiring that all legal documents should have stamps.

This was, indeed, an innovation, for hitherto custom duties had been imposed upon the colonists solely for the purpose of regulating trade: the Stamp Act would raise revenues from them. There was something to be said in defence of the Act, for though the late war had not been undertaken solely as a defence of the colonies, yet a great expense had been incurred by the operations necessary to repress the intrusions of the French Canadians. Was it right, Grenville asked, that the colonies should be defended by England, and should contribute nothing towards the cost of their defence? To Grenville, who never looked ahead, this seemed unreasonable, for, he contended, since the money raised in America was to be spent there, there could be no justifiable objection to the tax which it was proposed to impose; but, while he pointed out to the colonial agents resident in London that the tax was reasonable and an easy and equitable way to raise the money, he expressed his willingness, if the colonists disliked the scheme, to abandon it if the colonists would raise the money themselves in some other way. In his desire to be conciliatory he decided to defer the introduction of the Stamp Act until America had time to express an opinion.[5]

Early in 1765 the Stamp Act was introduced, and passed the House of Commons with but forty dissentients. The debate, Burke says, was extremely languid. Pitt, suffering from gout, was unable to be present, but Conway[6] and Beckford protested against the measure, and Barré[7], more far-seeing than most, denounced it in a startling speech, in which he referred to the colonists as "sons of liberty." "Children planted by your care!" he exclaimed. "No! your oppressions planted them in America; they fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country! They nourished by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them! They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence." The Bill, which was to come into operation on November 1, passed the House of Lords without a division, and the Royal Assent was given on March 22.

The question, however, was in England "little understood and less attended to";[8] and contemporary memoirs may be ransacked in vain for any reference thereto. Even Walpole, whose letters form so detailed a chronicle of events, dismissed it cavalierly. "There has been nothing of note in Parliament," he wrote to Lord Hertford on February 12, 1765, "but one slight day on the American taxes, which Charles Townshend supporting, received a pretty heavy thump from Barré, who is the present Pitt and the dread of all vociferous Norths and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so much of Mr. Grenville's power." The fact of the matter was that England had not realized the importance of colonies, and practically nothing was known in the motherland of her possession. "I suppose you are violent for your American friends," Lady Sarah Bunbury, so late as July 6, 1775, wrote to Lady Susan O'Brien. "I hope they are good sort of people, but I don't love Presbyterians and I love the English soldiers, so that I at present have a horror of those who use them ill beyond the laws of war, which scalping certainly is, and I don't believe a word of the soldiers doing more than they ought; you know one is always unreasonable when one's prejudiced."[9]

Now the colonists were, of course, no more addicted to scalping and other practices "beyond the laws of war" than the English; and the knowledge that these and similar ideas prevailed at home undoubtedly infused a feeling of bitterness into their love for the country of their descent. Moreover, very naturally, they resented the almost ostentatious display of their unimportance in the eyes of English ministers, which became known to them when, to give one example from many, on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, a whole closetful of American despatches was found unopened.[10] They were English, and proud of their descent, a hardy, frugal, independent folk, determined not to be treated as a subject race; the last people in the world to brook interference, and the first to remember that they were colonies, not conquests, brothers, not slaves. They were simple in their habits and in their ideas, and, in some places, Puritanical to excess—the stool of repentance and the scold's gag were still in use, and they had anticipated the publican's "black list"; but as a nation they were thriving, and the towns of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia were so many convincing proofs of their increasing wealth.

The colonists were bound to the motherland by a strong feeling of loyalty, by fear of the French-Canadians, whose aggressions they were not strong (or perhaps, it is more accurate to say did not realize they were strong) enough to repel, and also by the prevailing jealousy between the different provinces which was so strong that Otis in 1765 declared that, if left to itself, "America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion." England's treatment of the colonies was not harsh, but the tactless treatment aroused even more discontent than an illiberal policy. The Americans were continually being irritated by the attitude of the governors sent out by the committee of the Privy Council responsible for colonial government, but paid by the provinces over which they ruled, who did not understand them, made no attempt to learn their habits, and showed little or no regard for the Assemblies in their districts. "Such wrong-headed people," said one of these officers, "I thank God I never had to do with before." The Americans, on the other hand, complained of many of the people who were sent from England to occupy official positions. "For many years past most of the places in the gift of the Crown have been filled with broken Members of Parliament, of bad, if any, principles, pimps, valets-de-chambre, electioneering scoundrels, and even livery servants." General Huske wrote about 1758: "In one word, America has been for many years made the hospital of Great Britain for her decayed courtiers and abandoned, worn-out dependants. I can point you out a chief justice of a province appointed from home for no other reason than publicly prostituting his honour and conscience at an election; a livery servant that is secretary of a province, appointed from hence; a pimp, collector of a whole province, who got this place of the man in power for prostituting his handsome wife to his embraces and procuring him other means of gratifying his lust. Innumerable are instances of this sort in places of great