cret
motives might easily be inferred. Little wonder if these men, who had
managed by hook or crook to get into their own hands or into the hands
of their families nearly all the lucrative offices in the province, now
sought to curry favor with ministers in order to maintain their amazing
ascendancy!

When the Stamp Act was passed, all men in America had professed
themselves, and were thought to be, Sons of Liberty. Even Mr. Hutchinson
had declared himself against ministerial measures. But scarce a month
had elapsed since the law was to have gone into effect before it was
clear to the discerning that, for all their professions, most of
the "better sort" were not genuine Sons of Liberty at all, but timid
sycophants, pliant instruments of despotism, far more intent upon the
ruin of Mr. Adams and of America in general than any minister could
be shown to be. For the policy of dispensing with activities requiring
stamped papers, much lauded by these gentry as an effective and
constitutional means of defeating the law, was after all nothing but "a
sort of admittance of the legality of the Stamp Act, and had a tendency
to enforce it, since there was just reason to apprehend that the
secret enemies of liberty had actually a design to introduce it by
the necessity to which the people would be reduced by the cessation of
business." It was well, therefore, in view of such insidious designs of
secret enemies, that the people, even to the lowest ranks, should become
"more attentive to their liberties, and more inquisitive about them, and
more determined to defend them, than they were ever before known or had
occasion to be."

To defend their liberties, not against ministers but against ministerial
tools, who were secret betrayers of America, true patriots accordingly
banded themselves in societies which took to themselves the name of Sons
of Liberty and of which the object was, by "putting business in motion
again, in the usual channels, without stamps," to prevent the Stamp Act
ever being enforced. Such a society composed mainly of the lower orders
of people and led by rising young lawyers, was formed in New York. On
January 7, at Mr. Howard's coffee house, abandoning the secrecy which
had hitherto veiled their activities, its members declared to the world
their principles and the motives that would determine their action in
the future:

"Resolved: That we will go to the last extremity and venture our lives
and fortunes effecti