power and faculties God has given me, all such
instruments of slavery on one hand and of villainy on the other."
Parliament had authorized the issue of the writs, however, and the custom
house officers therefore had the law on their side. Writs were granted,
but their enforcement was attended with so many difficulties that the
customs authorities virtually gave up this attempt to encroach upon the
rights of the people. The next step in provoking the colonists to
revolution was the Stamp Act. The object of this enactment was to raise
money for the support of British troops and the payment of salaries to
certain public officers in the colonies who had depended upon the
colonial treasuries for their compensation. In this there was a threefold
invasion of colonial rights. Taxation without representation was contrary
to a principle recognized for centuries in England, vindicated in the
revolution which cost Charles I his head, and upheld in America from the
very beginning of the settlements here. Again, while British troops had
been welcome as allies in battling against the French and the Indians,
they were not desired as garrisons to overawe the free people of the
colonies, and finally the colonial officers whom it was proposed to pay
from the royal treasury would become the masters instead of servants of
the people--or they would be servants only of the king. The purpose of
the Stamp Act obviously was to make America the vassal of Great Britain.
The act required that legal documents and commercial instruments should
be written, and that newspapers should be printed on stamped paper.

[1] John Adams, in his letter to the President of Congress, July 17,
1780, attributes the outbreak of the Revolution to Hutchinson's
course in this and other matters. "He was perhaps the only man in
the world," wrote Adams, "who could have brought on the controversy
between Great Britain and America in the manner and at the time it
was done, and involved the two countries in an enmity which must end
in their everlasting separation."

* * *

The people everywhere protested against the tyrannical action of
Parliament. Samuel Adams drew up the instructions to the newly elected
representatives of Boston to use all efforts against the plan of
parliamentary taxation. It was resolved "that the imposition of duties
and taxes by the Parliament of Great Britain upon a