edge_, designed to make way for
impositions too heavy to be borne. The appropriation of the money did
not lessen the odium of the tax. The colonists considered the
dependence of the officers of government, on the colonial legislature,
for their salaries, as the best security for their attending to the
interests, and cultivating the affections of the provinces.[193] Yet
the opinion that this act was unconstitutional, was not adopted so
immediately, or so generally, as in the case of the stamp act. Many
able political essays appeared in the papers, demonstrating that it
violated the principles of the English constitution and of English
liberty, before the conviction became general, that the same principle
which had before been successfully opposed, was again approaching in a
different form.

[Footnote 193: Prior documents.]

{1768}

The general court of Massachusetts, perceiving plainly that the claim
to tax America was revived, and being determined to oppose it,
addressed an elaborate letter to Dennis de Berdt, agent for the house
of representatives, detailing at great length, and with much weight of
argument, all the objections to the late acts of parliament. Letters
were also addressed to the earl of Shelburne and general Conway,
secretaries of state, to the marquis of Rockingham, lord Camden, the
earl of Chatham, and the lords commissioners of the treasury. These
letters, while they breathe a spirit of ardent attachment to the
British constitution, and to the British nation, manifest a perfect
conviction that their complaints were just.

Conclusive as the arguments they contained might have appeared to
Englishmen, if urged by themselves in support of their own rights,
they had not much weight, when used to disprove the existence of their
authority over others. The deep and solemn tone of conviction,
however, conveyed in all these letters, ought to have produced a
certainty that the principles assumed in them had made a strong
impression, and would not be lightly abandoned. It ought to have been
foreseen that with such a people, so determined, the conflict must be
stern and hazardous; and, it was well worth the estimate, whether the
object would compensate the means used to obtain it.

[Sidenote: Petition to the King.]

The assembly also voted a petition to the King, replete with
professions of loyalty and attachment; but stating, in explicit terms,
their sense of the acts against which they petitioned.