reast to breast till the conflagration became general. In this
business, New England had a principal share. The inhabitants of that
part of America, in particular, considered their obligations to the
mother-country, for past favors, to be very inconsiderable. They were
fully informed that their forefathers were driven by persecution to the
woods of America, and had there, without any expense to the parent
state, effected a settlement on bare creation. Their resentment, for the
invasion of their accustomed right of taxation, was not so much
mitigated by the recollection of late favors as it was heightened by the
tradition of grievous sufferings to which their ancestors, by the rulers
of England, had been subjected.

The heavy burdens which the operation of the Stamp Act would have
imposed on the colonists, together with the precedent it would establish
of future exactions, furnished the American patriots with arguments
calculated as well to move the passions as to convince the judgments of
their fellow-colonists. In great warmth they exclaimed: "If the
Parliament have a right to levy the stamp duties, they may by the same
authority lay on us imposts, excises, and other taxes without end, till
their rapacity is satisfied or our abilities are exhausted. We cannot,
at future elections, displace these men who so lavishly grant away our
property. Their seat and their power are independent of us, and it will
rest with their generosity where to stop in transferring the expenses of
government from their own to our shoulders."

It was fortunate for the liberties of America that newspapers were the
subject of a heavy stamp duty. Printers, when uninfluenced by
government, have generally arranged themselves on the side of liberty,
nor are they less remarkable for their attention to the profits of their
profession. A stamp duty, which openly invaded the first and threatened
a diminution of the last provoked their united zealous opposition. They
daily presented to the public original dissertations tending to prove
that if the Stamp Act were suffered to operate, the liberties of
Americans were at an end, and their property virtually transferred to
their transatlantic fellow-subjects. The writers among the Americans,
seriously alarmed for the fate of their country, came forward with
essays to prove that, agreeably to the British Constitution, taxation
and representation were inseparable; that the only constitutional mode
of raising mon