which case I think I am to be
justified, & am not liable to a seizure, or even run any risque at all,
as I have taken the Step of the Law, and made application for clearance,
& can get no other."

Notwithstanding such practices, which were frequent enough, it was a
dull winter, with little profit flowing into the coffers of Mr. Hancock,
with low wages or none at all for worthy artisans and laborers; so that
it must often have seemed, as Governor Moore said, "morally impossible
that the people here can subsist any time under such inconveniences
as they have brought on themselves." Such inconveniences became more
irksome as time passed, with the result that, during the cold and
dreary months of February and March, it became every day a more pressing
question, particularly for the poor, to know whether the bad times would
end at last in the repeal or the admission of the tyrannical act.

Confronted with this difficult dilemma, the faithful Sons of Liberty
were preparing in April to assemble a continental congress as a last
resort, when rumors began to spread that Parliament was on the point
of carrying the repeal. The project of a congress was accordingly
abandoned, and everywhere recrimination gave place to rejoicing. On
April 21, 1766, the vigilant Boston Sons voted that when the rumors
should be confirmed they would celebrate the momentous event in a
befitting manner--would celebrate it "Under the deepest Sense of Duty
and Loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign King George, and in respect
and Gratitude to the Patriotic Ministry, Mr. Pitt, and the Glorious
Majority of both Houses of Parliament, by whose Influence, under Divine
Providence, against a most strenuous Opposition, a happy Repeal of the
Stamp Act, so unconstitutional as well as Grievous to His Majesty's good
Subjects of America, is attained; whereby our incontestible Right of
Internal Taxation remains to us inviolate."

CHAPTER IV. Defining The Issue

A pepper-corn, in acknowledgement of the right, is of more
value than millions without it.--George Grenville.

A perpetual jealousy respecting liberty, is absolutely
requisite in all free states.--John Dickinson.

Good Americans everywhere celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act with
much festivity and joyful noises in the streets, and with "genteel
entertainments" in taverns, where innumerable toasts were drunk to
Liberty and to its English defenders. Before his house on Beacon Hill,