s the speaker tried to call him to order, "if
this be treason, make the most of it!"

The other colonies were not slow in acting. Massachusetts called for a
general congress, in order that all might discuss the situation and
agree upon some course to be pursued in common. South Carolina responded
most cordially, at the instance of her noble, learned, and far-sighted
patriot, Christopher Gadsden. On the 7th of October, delegates from nine
colonies met in a congress at New York, adopted resolutions like those
of Virginia, and sent a memorial to the king, whose sovereignty over
them they admitted, and a remonstrance to Parliament, whose authority to
tax them they denied. The meeting of this congress was in itself a
prophecy of what was to happen if the British government should persist
in the course upon which it had now entered.

[Sidenote: Stamp Act riots.]

Meanwhile the summer had witnessed riots in many places, and one of
these was extremely disgraceful. Chief-justice Hutchinson had tried to
dissuade the ministry from passing the Stamp Act, but an impression had
got abroad among the wharves and waterside taverns of Boston that he had
not only favoured it but had gone out of his way to send information to
London, naming certain merchants as smugglers. Under the influence of
this mistaken notion, on the night of the 26th of August a drunken mob
plundered Hutchinson's house in Boston and destroyed his library, which
was probably the finest in America at that time. Here, as is apt to be
the case, the mob selected the wrong victim. Its shameful act was
denounced by the people of Massachusetts, and the chief-justice was
indemnified by the legislature. In the other instances the riots were of
an innocent sort. Stamp officers were forced to resign. Boxes of
stamped paper arriving by ship were burned or thrown into the sea, and
at length the governor of New York was compelled by a mob to surrender
all the stamps entrusted to his care. These things were done for the
most part under the direction of societies of workingmen known as "Sons
of Liberty," who were pledged to resist the execution of the Stamp Act.
At the same time associations of merchants declared that they would buy
no more goods from England until the act should be repealed, and lawyers
entered into agreements not to treat any document as invalidated by the
absence of the required stamp. As for the editors, they published their
newspapers decorated with a gri