At all events, the intelligence of these new taxes, though only import duties, found the Colonists in a humor to resist any addition of any kind to their financial burdens.  The events of the last two years had taught them their strength.  It was undeniable that the repeal of the Stamp Act had been extorted by the riots in Boston and other places, and the success of this system of intimidation could not fail to encourage its repetition.  Accordingly, the news of this fresh attempt at taxation was met by a unanimous determination to resist it.  Newspaper writers and pamphleteers denounced not only the duties but the ministry which imposed them.  Petitions from almost every State were sent over to England, addressed to the King and to the Parliament; but the violent temper of the leaders of the populace was not content to wait for answers to them.  Associations were at once formed in Boston and one or two other cities, where resolutions were adopted in the spirit of retaliation (as their framers avowed), to desist from the importation of any articles of British commerce, and to rely for the future on American manufactures.  The principal Custom-house officers at Boston were badly beaten, and others were compelled to seek refuge in a man-of-war which happened to be in the harbor.

It would be painful, and at the present day useless, to trace the steps by which these local disturbances gradually grew into one general insurrection.  The spirit of resistance was undoubtedly fanned by a party which from the first contemplated a total separation from England as its ultimate result,[46] if, indeed, they had not conceived the design even before Grenville had given the first provocation to discontent.  But the Colonists were not without advocates in England, even among the members of the government.  The Duke of Grafton, while he remained Prime-minister, was eager to withdraw all the duties of which they complained; but he was overruled by the majority of his colleagues.  He prevailed, however, so far that Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, was authorized to write a circular-letter to the governors of the different provinces, in which he disowned, in the most distinct language possible, “a design to propose to Parliament to lay any farther taxes upon America for the purpose of raising a revenue,” and promised for the next session a repeal of all the taxes except that on tea; and when the Duke retired from the Treasury, and was succeeded by Lord North, that statesman himself brought forward the promised repeal in an elaborate speech,[47] in which he explained that the duty on tea, which he alone proposed to retain, had been originally a boon to the Americans rather than an injury, as being accompanied by the removal of a far heavier tax.  But he admitted that even that consideration was not the one which influenced him in his opinion that that duty should be maintained, so greatly was the perception that the real object of those who complained of it was,