ts had nothing to fear from the
one and little to fear from the other foe. They thought that they had
much to fear from the presence of a British garrison of ten thousand
men. This British garrison might, on occasion, be used not in defence
of their liberties, but in diminution of their liberties. The
irritation against the proposed garrison might have {87} smouldered out
if it had not been fanned into a leaping flame by the means proposed
for the maintenance of the garrison. Grenville proposed to raise
one-third of the cost of support from the colonies by taxation. No
proposal could have been better calculated to goad every colony and
every colonist into resistance, and to fuse the scattered elements of
resistance into a solid whole. More than two generations earlier both
Massachusetts and New York had formally denied the right of the Home
Government to levy any tax upon the American colonies. The colonies
were not represented at Westminster--could not, under the conditions,
be represented at Westminster. The theory that there should be no
taxation without representation was as dear to the American for America
as it was dear to the Englishman for England. Successive English
Governments, forced in times of financial pressure wistfully to eye
American prosperity, had dreamed, and only dreamed, of raising money by
taxing the well-to-do colonies. It was reserved to the Government
headed by Grenville, in its madness, to attempt to make the dream a
reality. It is true that even Grenville did not propose, did not
venture to suggest that the American colonies should be taxed for the
direct benefit of the English Government. He brought forward his
scheme of taxation as a benefit to America, as a contribution to the
expense of keeping up a garrison that was only established in the
interests of America and for America's welfare. In this spirit of
benevolence, and with apparent confidence of success, Grenville brought
forward his famous Stamp Act.

There were statesmen in England who saw with scarcely less indignation
than the Americans themselves, and with even more dismay, the unfolding
of the colonial policy of the Government. These protested against the
intolerable weight of the duties imposed, and arraigned the folly
which, by compelling these duties to be paid in specie, drained away
the little ready money remaining in the colonies, "as though the best
way to cure an emaciated body, whose juices happened to be