nning skull and cross-bones instead of
the stamp.

[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.]

These demonstrations produced their effect in England. In July, 1765,
the Grenville ministry fell, and the new government, with Lord
Rockingham at its head, was more inclined to pay heed to the wishes and
views of the Americans. The debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act
lasted nearly three months and was one of the fiercest that had been
heard in Parliament for many a day. William Pitt declared that he
rejoiced in the resistance of the Americans, and urged that the act
should be repealed because Parliament ought never to have passed it; but
there were very few who took this view. As the result of the long
debate, at the end of March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, and a
Declaratory Act was passed in which Parliament said in effect that it
had a right to make such laws for the Americans if it chose to do so.

The people of London, as well as the Americans, hailed with delight the
repeal of the Stamp Act; but the real trouble had now only begun. The
resolutions of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry and their approval by the
Congress at New York had thrown the question of American taxation into
the whirlpool of British politics, and there it was to stay until it
worked a change for the better in England as well as in America.

[Sidenote: How the question was affected by British politics.]

The principle that people must not be taxed except by their
representatives had been to some extent recognized in England for five
hundred years, and it was really the fundamental principle of English
liberty, but it was only very imperfectly that it had been put into
practice. In the eighteenth century the House of Commons was very far
from being a body that fairly represented the people of Great Britain.
For a long time there had been no change in the distribution of seats,
and meanwhile the population had been increasing very differently in
different parts of the kingdom. Thus great cities which had grown up in
recent times, such as Sheffield and Manchester, had no representatives
in Parliament, while many little boroughs with a handful of inhabitants
had their representatives. Some such boroughs had been granted
representation by Henry VIII. in order to create a majority for his
measures in the House of Commons. Others were simply petty towns that
had dwindled away, somewhat as the mountain villages of New England have
dwindled sinc