History of the United States, Volume 2 | Page 6

and alarm seized the colonists. It seemed that a deliberate blow was about to be struck at their liberties. From the day of their founding the colonies had never been taxed directly except by their own legislatures. Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia at once sent humble but earnest protests to Parliament against the proposed innovation.
The act was nevertheless passed in March of the next year, with almost no opposition. By its provisions, business documents were illegal and void unless written on the stamped paper. The cheapest stamp cost a shilling, the price ranging upward from that according to the importance of the document. The prepared paper had to be paid for in specie, a hardship indeed in a community where lawsuits were very common, and whose entire solid coin would not have sufficed to pay the revenue for a single year. Even bitterest Tories' declared this requirement indefensible. Another flagrant feature of the act was the provision that violators of it should be tried without a jury, before a judge whose only pay came from his own condemnations.
[Illustration: Crowd of well-dressed men standing around a fire.] Burning the Stamps in New York.
[1765]
The effect upon the colonies was like that of a bomb in a powder-magazine. The people rose up en masse. In every province the stamp-distributor was compelled to resign. In Portsmouth, N. H., the newspaper came out in mourning, and an effigy of the Goddess of Liberty was carried to the grave. The Connecticut legislature ordered a day of fasting and prayer kept, and an inventory of powder and ball taken. In New York a bonfire was made of the stamps in the public square. The bells in Charleston, S. C., were tolled, and the flags on the ships in the harbor hung at half-mast. The colonists entered into agreements to buy no goods from England until the act was repealed. Even mourning clothes, since they must be imported, were not to be worn, and lamb's flesh was abjured that more wool might be raised for home manufacture. England's colonial trade fell off so alarmingly in consequence that Manchester manufacturers petitioned Parliament to repeal the act, asserting that nine-tenths of their workmen were idle. Besides these popular demonstrations, delegates from nine colonies met in New York, in October, 1765, often called the Stamp Act Congress, and adopted a declaration of rights, asserting that England had no right to tax them without their consent. During the days of the Stamp Act excitement, the term "colonist" gave way to "American," and "English" to "British," a term of the deeper opprobrium because Bute, the king's chief adviser, was a Briton.
Startled by this unexpected resistance, Parliament, in January of the next year, began to debate repeal. We must in fairness to England look at both sides of the problem of colonial taxation. As general administrator of colonial affairs, the English Government naturally desired a fixed and certain revenue in America, both for frontier defence against Indians and French and for the payment of colonial governors. While each stood ready to defend its own territory, the colonies were no doubt meanly slow about contributing to any common fund. They were frequently at loggerheads, too, with their governors over the question of salaries. On the other hand, the colonists made the strong plea that self-taxation was their only safeguard against tyranny of king, Parliament, or governor.
In the great debate which now ensued in Parliament over England's right to tax America, Mansfield, the greatest constitutional lawyer of his day, maintained--first, that America was represented in Parliament as much as Manchester and several other large cities in England which elected no members to the House of Commons, and yet were taxed; and, second, that an internal tax, such as that on stamps, was identical in principle with customs duties, which the colonies had never resisted. In reply, Pitt, the great champion of the colonies, asserted--first, that the case of the colonies was not at all like that of Manchester; the latter happened not to be represented at that time because the election laws needed reforming, while the colonies, being three thousand miles away, could in the nature of the case never be adequately represented in an English Parliament; and, second, that as a matter of fact a sharp distinction had always, since the Great Charter, been made between internal taxation and customs duties.
Had the colonies rested their case upon constitutional argument alone it would have been relatively weak. While it was then a question, and will be forever, whether the American settlements were king's colonies, Parliament's colonies, or neither, but peculiar communities which had resulted from growth, the English lawyers had a good deal of logic on their side. Unconstitutional measures had indeed been resorted to--the writs of assistance, taking Americans beyond sea