l
Gage, the commander-in-chief, declined to interfere at the risk of
beginning a civil war, and the stamps were surrendered and locked up in
the town hall. Besides these not a parcel of stamps was left in the
colonies. For a time this put an end to legal business, and the courts
were closed. Then lawyers agreed to take no notice of the lack of stamps
on documents, and at last the governors declared that the operation of
the act was to be reckoned as suspended. Retaliatory measures were
concerted. Merchants combined to stop all importation from England,
cancelled their orders and delayed sending remittances. Associations
were formed for abandoning the use of English goods, and the richest
citizens either wore old clothes or rough material of colonial
production. Manufactories of linen, cloth, and hardware were started,
and in order to insure a supply of wool, butchers were forbidden by
their customers to kill lambs.

The distinction made by the party of resistance between external and
internal taxation was in accordance with previous practice. Though
parliament had frequently imposed port-duties on the colonies, it had
abstained from imposing taxes within them. The stamp act was a new
departure. English history afforded ground for the distinction, which
was alleged in Bate's case, in the reign of James I., in support of the
claim of the crown. Yet it is clearly artificial, for a division of
taxes, such as into external and internal, only concerns their
incidence; it is a matter which belongs to economics and does not affect
political right. The colonists' claim of exemption from parliamentary
taxation on the ground of non-representation appeals to the sympathy of
Englishmen. Both in England and America there were some who desired that
the colonies should be represented in parliament, but their distance
from England and the ignorance of both peoples as regards the
circumstances and needs of each other would have been fatal objections
to any such scheme. The claim of the colonists seems to imply a
misapprehension of the character of parliament; for parliament is not a
mere meeting of delegates, it is an imperial assembly, and its
sovereignty is neither derived from the perfection of its constitution
nor lessened by its imperfection. Taxation is an attribute of
sovereignty, and parliament had a right to tax the colonies because the
sovereign power resided in it. Where else could it reside? To deny the
right to tax and to a