nor sent written orders for the colonel of the provincial militia to call out his men, the latter refused to obey. At New York, the head-quarters of general Gage, commander-in-chief of the forces in America, the people surrounded the fort, and demanded that the stamps should be given up to them; a requisition which induced that officer to deposit them with the magistrates of the town. So that on the 1st of November, the day appointed for the commencement of the law, there were neither stamps for sale, nor distributors of stamps who dared to offer them, throughout the whole of North America. In this state of things business was suspended, and the courts of justice shut up, for want of legal instruments. The Quakers are said to have recommended that writings should be executed on the bark of trees, in order to evade the law that being neither paper nor parchment!

Such confusion could not possibly be of long duration. The congress of delegates from nine colonies met at New York on 7th of October, and framed petitions to the king and parliament, containing a declaration of their rights and grievances. This assembly was was the origin of that celebrated body of the same name, which combined the system of opposition to Great Britain, and effected the revolution. They agreed to import no more British commodities, and to discontinue the use of them; to encourage their own manufactures; and to suspend commercial transactions with the parent-country, until their grievances were redressed.

In England petitions came pouring in from the merchants, who were distressed by want of trade the effect of the late regulations in America; and by the refusal of the Americans to pay British debts, till they were removed. Parliament was greatly divided in opinion. Some of the members rejoiced that the Americans had resisted Mr Grenville; and his colleagues were dismissed from the ministry, the Marquis Rockingham and his friends succeeding. The new

ministry now therefore contained among them members who originally opposed the bill, and the desire of dropping it began generally to prevail.

In February 1766, Dr Franklin, who was still in London, was examined before the house of Commons, as a means of obtaining information on the subject; and to the strength and freedom of his observations the repeal of the obnoxious act was attributed. The Parliament however insisted on its right to tax the colonies, severely censuring the late excesses; and with the repeal of the Stamp Act his majesty graciously recommended the Assemblies to renumerate those of his injured subjects, whose property had fallen a sacrifice. Yet harmony now seemed not very remote, and very few duties existed in the colonies.

In July a further change took place in the ministry; and Mr Pitt, become earl of Chatham, and in declining health, was again called into power. An unfortunate act of Mr Grenville's however still remained in force, a sort of rider upon the Stamp Act, passed with a view of enforcing that measure. It first empowered military officers to quarter their soldiers in private houses; or enjoined, as a modification, the Assemblies to find them quarters, bedding, beer, rum, &c., which they entirely refused to do. This resistance of its authority the Parliament of Great Britain resolved to chastise; and as New York had been most opposed to the measure, an act suspending the legislature of that province was now carried by the minister. This again threw the colonies into commotion; and they now began to contemplate a final rupture with Britain. Yet some members of the cabinet still entertained the project of taxing the colonies; and Mr C. Townsend, during the indisposition of Mr Pitt, introduced a bill to lay duties on glass, china, painters' colours, tea, paper, &c., and established a resident board of commissioners to collect the revenue, and to prevent contraband trade. Power was given to the custom officers to break into dwelling-houses; and sir Samuel

Hood sent to relieve lord Colville in command of the squadron for the detection of smugglers, &c.

This tax was also at once resisted in America; and the inhabitants of Boston, at a public meeting, drew up resolutions, after the example of New York, for discontinuing the use of British manufactures, and encouraging their own. These resolutions of the town of Boston arrived in London in 1768, and created considerable excitement. Dr Franklin endeavoured to palliate them by addresses in the public papers; and, as the disturbances of the colonies were greatly misunderstood, he inserted a letter in the Chronicle of January 7th, entitled "The Causes of the American Discontents before 1768," with the motto "The waves never rise but where the winds blow." He here wisely avoids arguing the abstract question of the right of the mother-country to tax the colonies; states himself to be merely an impartial historian of American facts and opinions; and dwells altogether on the inexpediency of the late measures. He affects not to be able to estimate the weight due to America; yet contrives to enforce it with great ability by the following significant enumeration of the evils generally endured by thriving colonies, until goaded into self-deliverance:-"They reflected," he observes, "how lightly the interests of all America had been estimated here; that the whole American people was forbidden the advantage of a direct importation of wine, oils and fruit, from Portugal; but must take them loaded with all the expense of a voyage one thousand leagues round about, being to be landed first in England, to be re-shipped to America; expenses amounting, in war time, at least to thirty pounds per cent. more than otherwise they would have been charged with; and all this merely that a few Portugal merchants in London may gain a commission on those goods passing through their hands. That on a slight complaint of a few Virginia merchants, nine colonies had been restrained from making paper

money, become absolutely necessary to their internal commerce, from their constant remittance of their gold and silver to Britain. But not only the interest of a particular body of merchants, but the interest of any small body of British tradesmen or artificers, has been found, they say, to outweigh that of all the king's subjects in the colonies. There cannot be a stronger natural right than that of a man's making the best profit he can of the natural produce of his lands, provided he does not thereby hurt the state in general. Iron is to be found everywhere in America, and beavers are the natural produce of that country: hats, and nails, and steel, are wanted here. It is of no importance to the common welfare of the empire, whether a subject of the king gets his living by making hats on this or on that side of the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to obtain an act in their own favour, restraining that manufacture in America, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to England to be manufactured, and purchase back the hats, loaded with the charges of a double transportation. In the same manner have a few nail-makers, and a still smaller body of steel makers (perhaps there are not half a dozen of these in England) prevailed totally to forbid, by an act of parliament, the erecting of slitting-mills, or steel furnaces, in America; that the Americans may be obliged to take all their nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these artificers, under the same disadvantages.

"I say, reflecting on these things, they said one to another (their newspapers are full of such discourses) These people are not content with making a monopoly of us (forbidding us to trade with any other country of Europe, and compelling us to buy every thing of them, though in many articles we would furnish ourselves ten, twenty, and even to fifty, per cent. cheaper elsewhere) but now they have as good as declared they have a right to tax us ad libitum, internally and externally; and that our constitutions

and liberties shall all be taken away, if we do not submit to that claim.

"They are not content with the high prices at which they sell us their goods, but have now begun to enhance those prices by new duties, and, by the expensive apparatus of a new set of officers, appear to intend an augmentation and multiplication of those burdens, that shall still be more grievous to us. Our people have been foolishly fond of their superfluous modes and manufactures, to the impoverishing of our own country, carrying off all our cash, and loading us with debt; they will not suffer us to restrain the luxury of our inhabitants, as they do that of their own country, by laws: they can make laws to discourage or prohibit the importation of French superfluities: but though those of England are as ruinous to us as the French ones are to them, if we make a law of that kind, they immediately repeal it. Thus they get all our money from us by trade; and every profit we can anywhere make by our fisheries, our produce or our commerce, centres finally with them;-but this does not satisfy. It is time then to take care of ourselves by the best means in our power. Let us unite in solemn resolution and engagements with and to each other, that we will give these new officers as little trouble as possible, by not consuming the British manufactures on which they are to levy the duties. Let us live frugally, and let us industriously manufacture what we can for ourselves: thus we shall be able honourably to discharge the debts we already owe them; and after that, we may be able to keep some money in our country, not only for the uses of our internal commerce, but for the service of our gracious sovereign, whenever he shall have occasion for it, and think proper to require it of us in the old constitutional manner. For, notwithstanding the reproaches thrown out against us in their public papers and pamphlets, notwithstanding we have been reviled in their senate, as rebels and traitors, we are truly a loyal people. Scotland has had its rebellions, and