riots in Boston and other places, and
the success of this system of intimidation could not fail to encourage
its repetition. Accordingly, the news of this fresh attempt at taxation
was met by a unanimous determination to resist it. Newspaper writers and
pamphleteers denounced not only the duties but the ministry which
imposed them. Petitions from almost every State were sent over to
England, addressed to the King and to the Parliament; but the violent
temper of the leaders of the populace was not content to wait for
answers to them. Associations were at once formed in Boston and one or
two other cities, where resolutions were adopted in the spirit of
retaliation (as their framers avowed), to desist from the importation of
any articles of British commerce, and to rely for the future on American
manufactures. The principal Custom-house officers at Boston were badly
beaten, and others were compelled to seek refuge in a man-of-war which
happened to be in the harbor.

It would be painful, and at the present day useless, to trace the steps
by which these local disturbances gradually grew into one general
insurrection. The spirit of resistance was undoubtedly fanned by a party
which from the first contemplated a total separation from England as its
ultimate result,[46] if, indeed, they had not conceived the design even
before Grenville had given the first provocation to discontent. But the
Colonists were not without advocates in England, even among the members
of the government. The Duke of Grafton, while he remained
Prime-minister, was eager to withdraw all the duties of which they
complained; but he was overruled by the majority of his colleagues. He
prevailed, however, so far that Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of
State, was authorized to write a circular-letter to the governors of the
different provinces, in which he disowned, in the most distinct language
possible, "a design to propose to Parliament to lay any farther taxes
upon America for the purpose of raising a revenue," and promised for the
next session a repeal of all the taxes except that on tea; and when the
Duke retired from the Treasury, and was succeeded by Lord North, that
statesman himself brought forward the promised repeal in an elaborate
speech,[47] in which he explained that the duty on tea, which he alone
proposed to retain, had been originally a boon to the Americans rather
than an injury, as being accompanied by the removal of a far heavier
tax. But