to help them.
The judges, moreover, with their power over men's lives and property,
were no longer to be responsible to the people. If these changes were to
be effected, it would be nothing less than a revolution by which the
Americans would be deprived of their liberty. And, to crown all, the
money by which this revolution was to be brought about was to be
contributed in the shape of port duties by the Americans themselves! To
expect our forefathers to submit to such legislation as this was about
as sensible as it would have been to expect them to obey an order to buy
halters and hang themselves.

When the news of the Townshend acts reached Massachusetts, the assembly
at its next session took a decided stand. Besides a petition to the king
and letters to several leading British statesmen, it issued a circular
letter addressed to the other twelve colonies, asking for their friendly
advice and cooeperation with reference to the Townshend measures. These
papers were written by Samuel Adams. The circular letter was really an
invitation to the other colonies to concert measures of resistance if it
should be found necessary. It enraged the king, and presently an order
came across the ocean to Francis Bernard, royal governor of
Massachusetts, to demand of the assembly that it rescind its circular
letter, under penalty of instant dissolution. Otis exclaimed that Great
Britain had better rescind the Townshend acts if she did not wish to
lose her colonies. The assembly decided, by a vote of 92 to 17, that it
would not rescind. This flat defiance was everywhere applauded. The
assemblies of the other colonies were ordered to take no notice of the
Massachusetts circular, but the order was generally disobeyed, and in
several cases the governors turned the assemblies out of doors. The
atmosphere of America now became alive with politics; more meetings were
held, more speeches made, and more pamphlets printed, than ever before.

[Sidenote: The quarrel was not between England and America, but
between George III. and the principles which the Americans
maintained.]

In England the dignified and manly course of the Americans was generally
greeted with applause by Whigs of whatever sort, except those who had
come into the somewhat widening circle of "the king's friends." The Old
Whigs,--Burke, Fox, Conway, Savile, Lord John Cavendish, and the Duke of
Richmond; and the New Whigs,--Chatham, Shelburne, Camden, Dunning,
Barre, a