and buying
their sugar and molasses as usual. When, in Boston, writs of
assistance were employed by the customs officials, in order that by a
general power of search they might discover such smuggled property, the
merchants protested in the courts, and James Otis, a fiery young
lawyer, boldly declared the writs an infringement of the rights of the
colonists, unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Parliament to
authorize. To Ministers engaged in a tremendous war for the overthrow
of France, the behaviour of the colonies revealed a spirit scarcely
short of disloyalty, and a weakness of government no longer to be
tolerated. The Secretaries, the Board of Trade, the customs officials,
army officers, naval commanders, colonial governors, and judges all
agreed that the time had come for a thorough and drastic reform. They
approached the task purely and simply as members of the English
governing classes, ignorant of the colonists' political ideas and
totally indifferent to their views; and their measures were framed in
the spirit {28} of unquestioning acceptance of the principles of the
Acts of Trade as a fundamental national policy.

CHAPTER II

THE CONTEST OVER PARLIAMENTARY TAXATION, 1763-1773

The Prime Minister responsible for the new colonial policy was George
Grenville, who assumed his position in May, 1763, shortly after the
final treaty of Paris. Every other member of his Cabinet was a
nobleman, Grenville himself was brother of an earl, and most of them
had had places in preceding Ministries. It was a typical
administration of the period, completely aristocratic in membership and
spirit, quite indifferent to colonial views, and incapable of
comprehending colonial ideals even if they had known them. To them the
business in hand was a purely practical one; and with confident energy
Grenville pushed through a series of measures, which had been carefully
worked out, of course, by minor officials unknown to fame, during the
preceding months, {29} but which were destined to produce results
undreamed of by any one in England.

In the first place, there were a number of measures to strengthen and
revivify the Acts of Trade. Colonists were given new privileges in the
whale fishery, hides and skins were "enumerated," and steps were taken
to secure a more rigorous execution of the Acts by the employment of
naval vessels against smuggling. A new Sugar Act reduced the tariff on
foreign sugar to such a point t