=Legislative Action against the Stamp Act.=—­Leaders in the colonial assemblies, accustomed to battle against British policies, supported the popular protest.  The Stamp Act was signed on March 22, 1765.  On May 30, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a set of resolutions declaring that the General Assembly of the colony alone had the right to lay taxes upon the inhabitants and that attempts to impose them otherwise were “illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust.”  It was in support of these resolutions that Patrick Henry uttered the immortal challenge:  “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III....”  Cries of “Treason” were calmly met by the orator who finished:  “George III may profit by their example.  If that be treason, make the most of it.”

[Illustration:  PATRICK HENRY]

=The Stamp Act Congress.=—­The Massachusetts Assembly answered the call of Virginia by inviting the colonies to elect delegates to a Congress to be held in New York to discuss the situation.  Nine colonies responded and sent representatives.  The delegates, while professing the warmest affection for the king’s person and government, firmly spread on record a series of resolutions that admitted of no double meaning.  They declared that taxes could not be imposed without their consent, given through their respective colonial assemblies; that the Stamp Act showed a tendency to subvert their rights and liberties; that the recent trade acts were burdensome and grievous; and that the right to petition the king and Parliament was their heritage.  They thereupon made “humble supplication” for the repeal of the Stamp Act.

The Stamp Act Congress was more than an assembly of protest.  It marked the rise of a new agency of government to express the will of America.  It was the germ of a government which in time was to supersede the government of George III in the colonies.  It foreshadowed the Congress of the United States under the Constitution.  It was a successful attempt at union.  “There ought to be no New England men,” declared Christopher Gadsden, in the Stamp Act Congress, “no New Yorkers known on the Continent, but all of us Americans.”

=The Repeal of the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act.=—­The effect of American resistance on opinion in England was telling.  Commerce with the colonies had been effectively boycotted by the Americans; ships lay idly swinging at the wharves; bankruptcy threatened hundreds of merchants in London, Bristol, and Liverpool.  Workingmen in the manufacturing towns of England were thrown out of employment.  The government had sown folly and was reaping, in place of the coveted revenue, rebellion.