te districts to the whole body of the people; a union of
counsels and measures was effected, among widely disseminated
inhabitants."[342]

It will be observed that the three Acts passed by Parliament in respect
to Massachusetts, and the fourth, for quartering soldiers in towns,
changed the Charter of the province, and multiplied the causes of
difference between Great Britain and the colonies. To the causes of
dissatisfaction in the colonies arising from the taxing of them assumed
by Parliament (now only threepence a pound on tea), the arrangement with
the East India Company and the Courts of Admiralty, depriving the
colonists of the right of trial by jury, were now added the Boston Port
Bill, the Regulating Act, the Act which essentially changed the
chartered Constitution of Massachusetts, and the Act which transferred
Government officers accused of murder, to be removed to England. Mr.
Bancroft justly observes that "the Regulating Act complicated the
question between America and Great Britain. The country, under the
advice of Pennsylvania, might have indemnified the East India Company,
might have obtained by importunity the repeal of the tax on tea, or
might have borne the duty, as it had borne that on wine; but Parliament,
after ten years of premeditation, had exercised the power to abrogate
the laws and to change the Charter of a province without its consent;
and on this arose the conflict of the American Revolution."[343]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 339: Marshall's History of the American Colonies, Chap. xiv.,
pp. 406, 407.

"Resolutions were passed in every colony in which Legislatures were
convened, or delegates assembled in Convention, manifesting different
degrees of resentment, but concurring in the same great principles. All
declared that the cause of Boston was the cause of British America; that
the late Acts respecting that devoted town were tyrannical and
unconstitutional; that the opposition to this unministerial system of
oppression ought to be universally and perseveringly maintained; that
all intercourse with the parent country ought to be suspended, and
domestic manufactures encouraged; and that a General Congress should be
formed for the purpose of uniting and guiding the Councils and directing
the efforts of North America.

"The Committees of Correspondence selected Philadelphia for the place,
and the beginning of September as the time, for the meeting of this
important Council."--_Ib._, pp. 409,