e by Parliament.

The colonies were aflame with indignation. They declared that Parliament
had no right to pass such an act; that the Ministry that proposed it was
about an unlawful business; and that it was adding insult to injury to
send over soldiers to enforce such laws. People, when they meet on the
corner of the street and discuss public matters, are usually much more
outspoken than when they meet in legislatures; but the American
colonists were wont to talk very plainly in their assemblies, and it was
no new thing for the representatives, chosen by the people, to be at
odds with the governor, who represented the British Government. So when
Patrick Henry rose up in the House of Burgesses, with his resolutions
declaring that the Stamp Act was illegal and that the colony of Virginia
had always enjoyed the right of governing itself, as far as taxation
went,--and when he made a flaming speech which threatened the King,
there was great confusion; and though his resolutions were passed, there
was but a bare majority.

There is no record of what Washington may have said or how he voted on
that occasion, but his letters show that he thought the Stamp Act a very
unwise act on the part of Great Britain, and a piece of oppression.
"That Act," he says, "could be looked upon in no other light by every
person who would view it in its proper colors." But he did not rush into
a passion over it. Instead, he studied it coolly, and before it was
repealed, wrote at some length to his wife's uncle, who was living in
London, his reasons for thinking that the British Ministry would gain
nothing by pressing the Stamp Act and other laws which bore hard on
colonial prosperity; for he held that if they would only see it, the
colonies were as necessary to England as England to the colonies.

[Illustration: PATRICK HENRY.]

It is difficult for us to-day to put ourselves in the place of
Washington and other men of his time. Washington was a Virginian, and
was one of the Legislature. He was used to making laws and providing for
the needs of the people of Virginia, but he was accustomed to look
beyond Virginia to England. There the King was, and he was one of the
subjects of the King. The King's officers came to Virginia, and when
Washington saw, as he so often did, a British man-of-war lying in the
river off Mount Vernon, his mind was thrilled with pleasure as he
thought of the power of the empire to which he belonged. He had seen the
Briti