It is somewhat remarkable that it was in aristocratic Virginia, founded by Cavaliers, as well as in democratic Massachusetts, founded by Puritans, that the revolutionary element gained its principal strength during the controversy with the parent state.  The makers of Massachusetts were independents in church government and democrats in political principle.  The whole history of New England, in fact, from the first charters until the argument on the writs of assistance, is full of incidents which show the growth of republican ideas.  The Anglican church had no strength in the northern colonies, and the great majority of their people were bitterly opposed to the pretensions of the English hierarchy to establish an episcopate in America.  It is not therefore surprising that Massachusetts should have been the leader in the revolutionary agitation; on the other hand in Virginia the Anglican clergy belonged to what was essentially an established church, and the whole social fabric of the colony rested on an aristocratic basis.  No doubt before the outbreak of the revolution there was a decided feeling against England on account of the restrictions on the sale of tobacco; and the quarrel, which I have just referred to, with respect to the stipends of the clergy, which were to be paid in this staple commodity according to its market value at the time of payment, had spread discontent among a large body of the people.  But above all such causes of dissatisfaction was the growing belief that the political freedom of the people, and the very existence of the colony as a self-governing community, were jeopardised by the indiscreet acts of the imperial authorities after 1763.  It is easy then to understand that the action of the British government in 1767 renewed the agitation, which had been allayed for the moment by the repeal of the stamp act and the general belief that there would be no rigid enforcement of old regulations which meant the ruin of the most profitable trade of New England.  The measures of the ministry were violently assailed in parliament by Burke and other eminent men who availed themselves of so excellent an opportunity of exciting the public mind against a government which was doing so much to irritate the colonies and injure British trade.  All the political conditions were unfavourable to a satisfactory adjustment of the colonial difficulty.  Chatham had been one of the earnest opponents of the stamp act, but he was now buried in retirement—­labouring under some mental trouble—­and Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer in the cabinet of which Chatham was the real head, was responsible for measures which his chief would have repudiated as most impolitic and inexpedient in the existing temper of the colonies.