due to the fact that the
governors of those provinces refused to call the assemblies together
to consider the Massachusetts circular letter. Of the 27 members of
the Stamp Act Congress, few if any were inclined to rash or venturesome
measures. It is reported that Lord Melbourne, as Prime Minister of
England, once remarked to his Cabinet, "It doesn't matter what we say,
but we must all say the same thing." What the Stamp Act Congress said
was to be sure of some importance, but that it should say something
which all could agree to was of even greater importance. "There ought
to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on the continent," wrote
Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, "but all of us Americans." New
Yorkers and New England men could not indeed be so easily transformed
over night; but the Stamp Act Congress was significant as marking a kind
of beginning in that slow and difficult process. After eleven days of
debate, in which sharp differences of opinion were no doubt revealed, a
declaration of rights and grievances was at last adopted; a declaration
which was so cautiously and loyally phrased that all could subscribe to
it, and which was perhaps for that very reason not quite satisfactory to
anyone.

His Majesty's subjects in the colonies, the declaration affirmed, are
entitled to those "inherent rights and liberties" which are enjoyed by
"his natural born subjects" in Great Britain; among which rights is that
most important one of "not being taxed without their own consent"; and
since the people of the colonies, "from local circumstances, cannot be
represented in the House of Commons," it follows that taxes cannot be
"imposed upon them, but by their respective legislatures." The Stamp
Act, being a direct tax, was therefore declared to have a "manifest
tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonies." Of the
Sugar Act, which was not a direct tax, so much could not be said; but
this act was at least "burthensome and grievous," being subversive of
trade if not of liberty. No one was likely to be profoundly stirred by
the declaration of the Stamp Act Congress, in this month of October when
the spirited Virginia Resolutions were everywhere well known.

"The frozen politicians of a more northern government," according to
the "Boston Gazette," "say they [the people of Virginia] have spoken
treason"; but the "Boston Gazette," for its part, thought they had
"spoken very sensibly." With much reading o