said, and offices
remain vacant; let print-shops close, and ships lie in harbor: English
merchants will soon enough feel the pressure of slack business and force
ministers to another line of conduct. A good plan enough for the man of
independent fortune, for the judge whose income was assured, or the
thrifty merchant who, signing a non-importation agreement, had laid in a
stock of goods to be sold at high prices. But the wage-earner, the small
shopkeeper who was soon sold out, the printer who lived on his weekly
margin of profit, the rising lawyer whose income rose or fell with his
fees: such men were of another mind. The inactivity of the courts "will
make a large chasm in my affairs, if it should not reduce me to
distress," John Adams confides to his _Diary_ in December; and adds
naively that he was just on the point of winning a reputation and a
competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as
well as that of my country." Men who saw their incomes dwindle were
easily disposed to think that the cessation of business was an admission
of the legitimacy of the law, a kind of betrayal of the cause. And it
was to counteract the influence of lukewarm conservatives, men who were
content to "turn and shift, to luff up, and bear away," that those who
regarded themselves as the only true patriots, uniting in an association
of the Sons of Liberty, set about the task of "putting business in
motion again in the usual channels without stamps."

The object of the Sons of Liberty was in part, but only in part,
attained. Newspapers were printed as usual, and certainly there was no
lack of pamphlets. Retailers did not hesitate to sell playing-cards or
dice, nor were the grogshops closed for want of stamped licenses. Yet
the courts of law were nearly everywhere closed for a time, and if the
clamor of creditors and the influence of lawyers forced them to open in
most places, in New York and Massachusetts, at least, they did little
business or none at all so long as the Stamp Act remained on the
statute-book. But it was in connection with commercial activities that
the plan of the conservatives was most effective. Non-importation
agreements, generally signed by the merchants, were the more readily
kept because the customs officials were inclined to refuse any but
stamped clearance papers, while the war vessels in the harbors
intercepted ships that attempted to sail without them. As the
conservatives had predicted, t