illiam Shirley, royal
governor of Massachusetts, a worthy man and much more of a favourite
with the people than most of his class. Shirley recommended it as the
least disagreeable kind of tax, and the easiest to collect. It did not
call for any hateful searching of people's houses and shops, or any
unpleasant questions about their incomes, or about their invested or
hoarded wealth. It only required that legal documents and commercial
instruments should be written, and newspapers printed, on stamped paper.
Of all kinds of direct tax none can be less annoying, except for one
reason; it is exceedingly difficult to evade such a tax; it enforces
itself. For these reasons Grenville decided to adopt it. He arranged it
so that all the officers charged with the business of selling the
stamped paper should be Americans; and he gave formal notice of the
measure in March, 1764, a year beforehand, in order to give the colonies
time to express their opinions about it.

[Sidenote: Samuel Adams.]

In the Boston town-meeting in May, almost as soon as the news had
arrived, the American view of the case was very clearly set forth in a
series of resolutions drawn up by Samuel Adams. This was the first of
the remarkable state papers from the pen of that great man, who now, at
the age of forty-two, was just entering upon a glorious career. Samuel
Adams was a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1740. He had
been reared in politics from boyhood, for his father, a deacon of the
Old South Church, had been chief spokesman of the popular party in its
disputes with the royal governors. Of all the agencies in organizing
resistance to Great Britain none were more powerful than the New England
town-meetings, among which that of the people of Boston stood
preeminent, and in the Boston town-meeting for more than thirty years no
other man exerted so much influence as Samuel Adams. This was because of
his keen intelligence and persuasive talk, his spotless integrity,
indomitable courage, unselfish and unwearying devotion to the public
good, and broad sympathy with all classes of people. He was a thorough
democrat. He respected the dignity of true manhood wherever he found it,
and could talk with sailors and shipwrights like one of themselves,
while at the same time in learned argument he had few superiors. He has
been called the "Father of the Revolution," and was no doubt its most
conspicuous figure before 1775, as Washington certainly was a