"At home with my family, thinking." In due time, something came of his thinking. He wrote, "By inactivity we discover cowardice, and too much respect for the Act."
The Stamp Act was dead in New England and in all America. Very soon the Ministry were glad to bury their dead.
It was in such a spirit that Boston met the Writs of Assistance and the Stamp Act. What came of the resistance? When Parliament came together, the "great commoner" said,—every boy knew the passage by heart when I went to school,—"I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." The Ministry still proposed to put down America by armies. Mr Pitt said: "America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the Constitution along with her. But she would not fall." "I would advise," said he, "that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, totally, and immediately;" "that the reason for the repeal be assigned; that it was founded on an erroneous principle." Repealed it was, "absolutely, totally, and immediately."
But the British Ministry still insisted on taxation without representation. Massachusetts continued her opposition. There was a merchants' meeting in Boston in favour of freedom. It assembled from time to time, and had a large influence. Men agreed not to import British goods: they would wear their old clothes till they could weave new ones in America, and kill no more lambs till they had abundance of wool. Boston made a non-importation agreement. Massachusetts wrote a "circular letter" to the other colonies, asking them to make common cause with her,—a circular which the king thought "of the most dangerous and factious character." On the seventeenth of June, 1768, the town of Boston instructed its four representatives, Otis, Gushing, Adams, and Hancock: "It is our unalterable resolution at all times to assert and vindicate our dear and invaluable rights, at the utmost hazard of our lives and fortunes."[1] This seemed to promise an-
- ↑ Town Records of that date.
