n Parliament. We have no one to speak for
us in Parliament, and so we will not pay any taxes which Parliament votes.
The only taxes we will pay are those voted by our representatives in our
own colonial assemblies."

They were all the more ready to take this stand because for many years
they had bitterly disliked other English laws which were unfair to them.
One of these forbade selling their products to any country but England.
And, of course, if they could sell to no one else, they would have to sell
for what the English merchants chose to pay.

Another law said that the colonists should buy the goods they needed from
no other country than England, and that these goods should be brought over
in English vessels. So in buying as well as in selling they were at the
mercy of the English merchants and the English ship owners, who could set
their own prices.

But even more unjust seemed the law forbidding the manufacture in America
of anything which was manufactured in England. For instance, iron from
American mines had to be sent to England to be made into useful articles,
and then brought back over the sea in English vessels and sold to the
colonists by English merchants at their own price.

Do you wonder that the colonists felt that England was taking an unfair
advantage? You need not be told that these laws were strongly opposed. In
fact, the colonists, thinking them unjust, did not hesitate to break them.
Some, in spite of the laws, shipped their products to other countries and
smuggled the goods they received in exchange; and some dared make articles
of iron, wool, or other raw material, both for their own use and to sell
to others.

"We will not be used as tools for England to make out of us all the profit
she possibly can," they declared. "We are not slaves but free-born
Englishmen, and we refuse to obey laws which shackle us and rob us of our
rights."

So when to these harsh trade laws the Stamp Act was added, great
indignation was aroused. Among those most earnest in opposing the act was
Patrick Henry.

Let us take a look at the early life of this powerful man. He was born in
1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. His father was an able lawyer, and his
mother belonged to a fine old Welsh family.

But Patrick, as a boy, took little interest in anything that seemed to his
older friends worth while. He did not like to study nor to work on his
father's farm. His delight was to wander through the woods, gun in han