heirs should trade with British ports, until the act forbidding them
to trade with foreign ports should be repealed. Some of them, I dare
say, would have gone so far, had that been possible, as to pledge
themselves not to die, until the Stamp Act, compelling them to write
their wills on stamp-paper, was also repealed. This agreement was so
rigidly observed, that the men took to wearing jeans, and the women
linsey-woolseys, which they wove in their own looms; the old ladies
drank sassafras-tea, sweetened with maple-sugar; and old gentlemen
wrote no wills, but declared them on their death-bed to their weeping
families by word of mouth. Whether the people stopped marrying or not,
it is not known with certainty; but from my knowledge of human nature,
which is extensive, I do not think I should greatly hazard my
reputation as a historian, were I to state flatly, roundly, and
emphatically, that it had not the least effect in that way.

The days on which these measures were to go into effect were observed
by the colonists as days of fasting, prayer, and humiliation. All
business was laid aside, the shops were closed, the churches opened,
and the church-bells tolled as on some funeral occasion; and between
praying at church, and fasting at home, and brooding over their
grievances, the good people were very miserable indeed. Although they
suffered great inconvenience from their observance of the
non-importation agreement, yet they bore it patiently and cheerfully,
like men who felt that their cause was just and right. But the sudden
stoppage of the immense trade that flowed from the colonial ports into
those of the mother-country told dreadfully on the commerce of Great
Britain; and British merchants and British manufacturers, and British
people in general, soon began to suffer even more than the colonists
themselves. Whereupon, a counter stream of petitions and remonstrances
set in upon the king and parliament from the people at home, who
declared that the country would be ruined, if these odious measures,
crippling American commerce, were not speedily withdrawn. Said they,
"If we cannot sell the Americans our broadcloths, our flannels, and
our silks, the obstinate men of that country will stick to their
jeans, and the perverse women to their linsey-woolseys, till we are
undone for ever. In that one pestilent little town of Boston, our
trade in silks alone is not so good by fifty thousand dollars a year
as it has been heretofor