Barré could not restrain his indignation. In the course of a fiery rejoinder he uttered truths that made him the most loved Englishman in America, when his words were published there. "Your oppressions planted them in America," he thundered. "They met with pleasure all hardships compared with those they suffered in their own country. They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care for them, deputies of members of this house were sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behavior caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them: men who were often glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of justice in their own. They 'protected by your arms'?—They have, amid their constant and laborious industry, nobly taken up arms for the defense of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And believe me—remember—the same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still. They are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated." But Grenville had gone too far to retreat; the case went against America by two hundred and forty-five to forty-nine; and only Beckford and Conway were on record as denying the power of Parliament to enact the tax. All petitions from the colonies were refused. "We have power to tax them, and we will tax them," said one of the ministers. In the House of Lords the bill was agreed to without debate or dissent. The king, at the time of signing the bill, was suffering from one of his periodic attacks of insanity; but the ratification was accepted as valid nevertheless. Neither Franklin nor any of the other American agents imagined the act would be forcibly resisted in America. Even Otis had said, "We must submit." But they reckoned without their host. The stamp act was a two-edged sword; in aiming to cut down the liberties of America, it severed the bonds that tied her to the mother country.
The prospect before the colonies was truly intolerable. No product of their industry could be exported save to England; none but English ships might enter their ports; no wool might be moved from one part of the country to another; no Bible might be printed anywhere; all hats must come from England; no ore might be mined or worked; duties were imposed on almost every imported article of use or luxury. No marriage, promissory note, or other transaction requiring documentary record was valid except with the government stamp. In a word, convicts in a jail could hardly be shackled more severely than were these two millions of the most freedom-loving and intelligent people on the globe. "If this system were to prevail," remarked Thacher of Boston, "it would extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world."
But it was not to prevail. Patrick Henry had been elected to the legislature of Virginia. His first act was to maintain, in committee of the whole, that the colony had never given up its right to be governed by its own laws respecting taxation, and that it had been constantly recognized by England; and that any attempt to vest such power in other persons tended to destroy British as well as American freedom. In a passionate peroration he warned George III. to remember the fate of other tyrants who had trampled on popular liberties. Otis in Massachusetts suggested the novel idea of summoning a congress from all the colonies to deliberate on the situation. In New York a writer declared that while there was no disposition among the colonies to break with England as long as they were permitted their full rights, yet they would be "satisfied with no less."—"The Gospel promises liberty and permits resistance," said Mayhew. Finally, the dauntless and faithful Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, after considering Massachusett's suggestion of a union, pronounced, as head of the committee, in its favor.
In England, meanwhile, the cause of the colonies had been somewhat favored by the willfulness of the king, who, in order to bring his court favorites into power, dismissed the Grenville ministry. There were no persons of ability in the new cabinet, and vacant feebleness was accounted better for America than resolute will to oppress. The king himself, however, never wavered in his resolve that the colonies should be taxed. On the other hand, the colonies were at this time disposed to think that the king was friendly to their liberties. But whatever misapprehensions existed on either side were soon to be finally dispelled.
In August, 1765, the names of the stamp distributers (who were to be citizens of the colonies) were published in America; and the packages of stamped paper were dispatched from England. There was an old elm-tree in Boston, standing near the corner of Essex Street, opposite Boylston Market. On the morning of the 14th of August, two figures were descried by early pedestrians hanging from the lower branches of the tree. "They were dressed in square-skirted coats and small-clothes, and as their wigs hung down over their faces, they looked like real men. One was intended to represent the Earl of Bute, who was supposed to have advised the king to tax America; the other was meant for the effigy of Andrew Oliver, a gentleman belonging to one of the most respectable families in Massachusetts, whom the king had appointed to be the distributer of stamps." It was in vain that Hutchinson ordered the removal of the effigies; the people had the matter in their own hands. In the evening a great and orderly crowd marched behind a bier bearing the figures, gave three cheers for "Liberty, Property and no stamps," before the State House, where the governor and Hutchinson were in session, and thence went to the house which Oliver had intended for his stamp office, tore it down, and burned his image in the fire they kindled with it, in front of his own residence. "Death to the man who offers stamped paper to sell!" they shouted. "Beat an alarm!" quavered Hutchinson to the militia colonel.—"My drummers are in the mob," was the reply; and when Hutchinson attempted to disperse the crowd, they forced him to run the gantlet, in the Indian fashion which was too familiar to New Englanders, and caught him several raps as he ran. "If Oliver had been there he'd have been murdered," said Governor Bernard, with conviction; "if he doesn't resign—!" But Oliver, much as he loved the perquisites of the office, loved his life more, and he resigned before the mob could threaten him. Bernard, with chattering teeth, was ensconced in the safest room in the castle. There remained Hutchinson, in his handsome house in Garden Court Street, near the North Square. Late at night the mob came surging and roaring in that direction. As they turned into Garden Court Street, the sound of them was as if a wild beast had broken loose and was howling for its prey. From the window, the terrified chief-justice beheld "an immense concourse of people, rolling onward like a tempestuous flood that had swelled beyond its bounds and would sweep everything before it. He felt, at that moment, that the wrath of the people was a thousand-fold more terrible than the wrath of a king. That was a moment when an aristocrat and a loyalist might have learned how powerless are kings, nobles, and great men, when the low and humble range themselves against them. Had Hutchinson understood and remembered this lesson he need not in after years have been an exile from his native country, nor finally have laid his bones in a distant land."
The mob broke into the house, destroyed the valuable furniture, pictures and library, and completely gutted it. The act was denounced and repudiated by the better class of patriots, like Adams and Mayhew; but it served a good purpose. The voice of the infuriated mob is sometimes the only one that tyranny can hear. One after another all the colonies refused to accept the stamp act, and every stamp officer was obliged to resign. Meanwhile the leaders discussed the people's rights openly. The law was to go into effect on November 1st. "Will you violate the law of Parliament?" was asked. "The stamp act is against Magna Charta, and Lord Coke says an act of Parliament against Magna Charta is for that reason void," was the reply. "Rulers are attorneys, agents and trustees of the people," said Adams, "and if the trust is betrayed or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents. We have an indisputable right to demand our privileges against all the power and authority on earth." Never had there been such unanimity throughout the colonies; but in New York, General Gage, who had betrayed lack of courage under Amherst a few years before, but who was now commander-in-chief, declared he would put down disaffection with a strong hand. There were ships of war in the harbor, and the fort in the town mounted heavy guns. Major James of the artillery was intrusted with the preparations. "I'll cram the stamps down their throats with the end of my sword: if they attempt to rise I'll drive them out of town for a pack of rascals, with four and twenty men!" It was easy to pass a stamp act, and to bring stamped paper into the colonies; but it would take more than Major James, and Governor Golden, and General Gage himself to make the people swallow them. The day of the "Sons of Liberty" was dawning.
CHAPTER THIRTEENTH
THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON
Issue was now joined between America and England. They faced each other—the great, historic figure, and the stripling of a century—and knew that the limit had been reached. The next move might be irrevocable.
"You must submit to the tax."—"I will not submit."