vely to prevent the said Stamp Act from ever taking
place in this city and province; Resolved: That any person who
shall deliver out or receive any instrument of writing upon stamped
paper... shall incur the highest resentment of this society, and be
branded with everlasting infamy; Resolved: That the people who carry
on business as formerly on unstamped Paper... shall be protected to the
utmost power of this society."

Malicious men said that the Sons of Liberty were "much concerned that
the gentlemen of fortune don't publically join them," for which reason
the society "formed a committee of correspondence with the Liberty Boys
in the neighboring provinces." In February, the society did in fact
appoint such a committee, which sent out letters to all the counties of
New York and to all the colonies except Georgia, proposing the formation
of an intercolonial association of the true Sons of Liberty; to which
letters many replies were received, some of which are still preserved
among the papers of the secretary, Mr. John Lamb. The general sense
of these letters was that an intercolonial association and close
correspondence were highly necessary in view of the presence, in nearly
every colony, of many "secret and inveterate enemies of liberty," and of
the desirability of keeping "a watchful eye over all those who, from
the nature of their offices, vocations, or dispositions, may be the most
likely to introduce the use of stamped paper, to the total subversion of
the British constitution."

No doubt the society kept its watchful eye on every unusual activity and
all suspicious characters, but to what extent it succeeded in "putting
business in motion again, in the usual channels, without stamps," cannot
be said. Both before and after the society was founded, much business
was carried on in violation of the law: newspapers and pamphlets
continued to flourish in the land; the inferior courts at least were
sooner or later opened in nearly every colony; and not infrequently
unstamped clearance papers were issued to shipmasters willing to take
the risk of seizure in London or elsewhere. Mr. John Hancock, easily
persuading himself that there should be no risk, shipped a cargo of oil
with the Boston packet in December. "I am under no apprehensions," he
wrote his London agent. "Should there be any Difficulty in London as
to Marshall's clearance, You will please to represent the circumstances
that no stamps could be obtained,... in