Doubtless such sentiments animated far-reaching men, to whom liberty was so sweet, and power so enchanting.  They could not openly avow them without danger of arrest, until resistance was organized.  They contented themselves with making the most of oppressive English legislation, to stimulate the people to discontent and rebellion.  Ambition was hidden under the burden of taxation which was to make them slaves.  Although among the leaders there was great veneration for English tradition and law, the love they professed for England was rather an ideal sentiment than an actual feeling, except among aristocrats and men of rank.

Nor was it natural that the Colonists, especially the Puritans, should cherish much real affection for a country that had persecuted them and driven them away.  They felt that not so much Old England as New England was their home, in which new sentiments had been born, and new aspirations had been cultivated.  It was very seldom that a colonist visited England at all, and except among the recent comers their English relatives were for the most part unknown.  Loyalty to the king was gradually supplanted by devotion to the institutions which they had adopted, or themselves created.  In a certain sense they admitted that they were still subject to Great Britain, but one hundred and fifty years of self-government had nearly destroyed this feeling of allegiance, especially when they were aroused to deny the right of the English government to tax them without their own consent.

With the denial of the right of taxation by England naturally came resistance.

The first line of opposition arose under a new attempt of England to enforce the Sugar Act, which was passed to prevent the American importation of sugar and molasses from the West Indies, in exchange for lumber and agricultural products.  It had been suffered to fall into abeyance; but suddenly in 1761 the government issued Writs of Assistance or search-warrants, authorizing customs officers to enter private stores and dwellings to find imported goods, not necessarily known but when even suspected to be there.  This was first brought to bear in Massachusetts, where the Colonists spiritedly refused to submit, and took the matter into the courts.  James Otis, a young Boston lawyer, was advocate for the Admiralty, but, resigning his commission, he appeared on behalf of the people, and his fiery eloquence aroused the Colonists to a high pitch of revolutionary resolve.  John Adams, who heard the speech, declared, “Then and there American independence was born.”  Independency however, was not yet in most men’s minds, but the spirit of resistance to arbitrary acts of the sovereign was unmistakably aroused.  In 1763 a no less memorable contest arose in Virginia, when the king refused to sanction a law of the colonial legislature imposing a tax which the clergy were unwilling to submit to.  This too was tested in the courts, and a young lawyer named Patrick Henry defended so eloquently the right of Virginia to make her own laws in spite of the king, that his passionate oratory inflamed all that colony with the same “treasonable” spirit.