The Havanna was exchanged with Spain for the Floridas. By establishing these great natural boundaries to the British empire in North America, all causes of future contest respecting that continent, with any potentate of Europe, were supposed to be removed.
Opinions on the supremacy of parliament, and its right to tax the colonies.... The stamp act.... Congress at New York.... Violence in the towns.... Change of administration.... Stamp act repealed.... Opposition to the mutiny act.... Act imposing duties on tea, &c. resisted in America.... Letters from the assembly of Massachusetts to members of the administration.... Petition to the King.... Circular letter to the colonial assemblies.... Letter from the earl of Hillsborough.... Assembly of Massachusetts dissolved.... Seizure of the Sloop Liberty.... Convention at Fanueil Hall.... Moderation of its proceedings.... Two British regiments arrive at Boston.... Resolutions of the house of Burgesses of Virginia.... Assembly dissolved.... The members form an association.... General measures against importation.... General court convened in Massachusetts.... Its proceedings.... Is prorogued.... Duties, except that on tea, repealed.... Circular letter of the earl of Hillsborough.... New York recedes from the non-importation agreement in part.... Her example followed.... Riot in Boston.... Trial and acquittal of Captain Preston.
The attachment of the colonies to the mother country was never stronger than at the signature of the treaty of Paris.[178] The union of that tract of country which extends from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the gulf of Mexico to the north pole, was deemed a certain guarantee of future peace, and an effectual security against the return of those bloody scenes from which no condition in life could afford an exemption.
[Footnote 178: After the expulsion of the French from Canada, a considerable degree of ill humour was manifested in Massachusetts with respect to the manner in which the laws of trade were executed. A question was agitated in court, in which the colony took a very deep interest. A custom house officer applied for what was termed "a writ of assistance," which was an authority to search any house for dutiable articles suspected to be concealed in it. The right to grant special warrants was not contested; but this grant of a general warrant was deemed contrary to the principles of liberty, and an engine of oppression equally useless and vexatious, which would enable every petty officer of the customs to gratify his resentments by harassing the most respectable men in the province. The ill temper excited on this occasion was shown by a reduction of the salaries of the judges; but no diminution of attachment to the mother country appears to have been produced by it.]