The Tory ideals, which took possession of the British Government when
Lord Bute succeeded to William Pitt in power, were soon applied to
England's relations to the American Colonies. The Seven Years' War
left England heavily in debt. She needed larger revenues, and being
now swayed by Imperialism, she easily found reasons for taxing the
Colonies. In 1765 she passed the Stamp Act which caused so much bad
feeling that in less than a year she decided to repeal it, but new
duties on paper, glass, tea, and other commodities were imposed
instead. In the North, Massachusetts took the lead in opposing what
the Colonists regarded as the unconstitutional acts of the Crown. The
patriotic lawyer of Boston, James Otis, shook the Colony with his
eloquence against the illegal encroachments and actual tyranny of the
English. Other popular orators of equal eminence, John and Samuel
Adams and Josiah Quincy, fanned the flames of discontent. Even the
most radical did not yet whisper the terrible word Revolution, or
suggest that they aspired to independence. They simply demanded their
"rights" which the arrogant and testy British Tories had shattered and
were withholding from them. At the outset rebels seldom admit that
their rebellion aims at new acquisitions, but only at the recovery of
the old.
Next to Massachusetts, Virginia was the most vigorous of the Colonies
in protesting against British usurpation of power, which would deprive
them of their liberty.
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