y might be useful, believed that the colonies had no
choice but to submit to the tax. Pitt was absent from parliament,
suffering from gout. Conway and Barre opposed the bill, and Barre, in a
speech of fervid eloquence, described the Americans as "sons of
liberty," driven from their country by tyranny and treated by her with
neglect. In the commons the bill was carried with only forty
dissentients, and in the lords apparently without a division. It
received the royal assent on March 22, 1765, and was to come into
operation on November 1. In April the mutiny act was extended to
America, binding the colonies to provide the king's troops with quarters
and certain necessaries, such as fuel and candles.

[Sidenote: _AMERICAN RESISTANCE._]

The stamp act raised a storm of indignation in the American colonies.
Some of them, and especially the New England colonies, already had a
substantial grievance in the heavy blow dealt to their prosperity by the
repression of their contraband trade. Their discontent was increased by
a suspicion that England was about to establish episcopacy among them at
their expense, for Archbishop Secker and other English churchmen were
anxious to introduce bishops into America. A more sentimental, though an
efficient cause of irritation also existed in the affectation of
superiority adopted by Englishmen towards their colonial
fellow-subjects. The stamp tax brought their discontent to a head, and
gave the party hostile to government an opportunity for stirring up
opposition. During the year unwisely allowed by Grenville for
considering the proposed tax, they busily agitated against it. While at
that time the Americans allowed that parliament had a right to impose
duties for the regulation of trade, they denied its right to levy an
internal tax for the purpose of revenue, because they were not
represented in parliament.

Opposition to the ministerial policy naturally began in Boston, where
the repression of contraband trade weighed most heavily and
where--though that was a smaller matter--the dislike to episcopacy was
specially strong. The town-meeting promptly passed resolutions denying
the right of parliament to tax the colonies without their consent. The
meeting was led by Samuel Adams, a man of frugal life and austere
character, who, after failing as a brewer and as a tax collector,
adopted the career most congenial to his tastes and talents of political
agitator. The resolutions were adopted by t