liam Pitt, whom the king
detested, had championed the Americans, made the monarch all the more
obstinate in his purpose to humiliate them. In 1767 Charles Townshend,
chancellor of the exchequer, carried through Parliament a bill putting a
duty upon tea, glass, paper and other articles entering American ports.
In connection with this measure the scheme of the British crown to reduce
the colonies to a vassal condition was fully disclosed. Not only were
troops to be supported out of the revenue thus raised, but the salaries
of governors, judges and crown attorneys were to be paid from it, and any
surplus remaining could be used by the king to pension Americans who had
gained the royal grace by their subserviency. Townshend suddenly died
after these measures had been adopted, and was succeeded by Lord North,
who soon afterward became prime minister. North was not personally in
favor of dealing harshly with the colonies, but he yielded to the royal
will as the price of remaining in office, and shares in history the
infamy of his master's course.

The Americans began to concert measures of resistance. They refused to
use the dutiable articles, and made it unprofitable to import them. The
Massachusetts legislature was dissolved by order of the king, because it
had sent a circular-letter to other colonies inviting common action
against the aggressions of Parliament. Other colonial assemblies were
dissolved by the king's governors because they answered the letter
favorably. The people's representatives continued to attend to the
people's interests in informal conventions, and had the more time to give
to the overshadowing issue of colonial rights, because royal displeasure
had relieved them from the ordinary business of law making. Boston and
Richmond worked in harmony in the one great cause, and North and South
forgot social and religious differences in common effort for the common
weal.

* * *

King George regarded Massachusetts as the hotbed and centre of colonial
discontent, and in the autumn of 1768 he sent two regiments of British
regulars to that city to assist in enforcing the Townshend acts. The
troops and the citizens had frequent disputes, for the colonists were
unused to military arrogance, and refused to be ordered about by
martinets in uniform. The Boston Massacre, so-called, in March, 1770,
when seven soldiers fired into a crowd of townspeople, killing five and
wounding