We may assure ourselves that it is possible to be happy on board some other vessel, with a better pilot, and bound for a better port, but life is serious on that vessel. We like to be amused, and are keenly interested in those gayer voyagers.
It seems to have been hard for England to take her American colonies seriously. "The gentlemen of the opposition on the other side of the water" were regarded as inferiors, or, at best, troublesome children, to be dealt with accordingly, and taught to know--and keep--their places.
As early as 1766 a "Planter" on the banks of the Potomac addressed a letter to "The Merchants of London," and printed in the London _Public Ledger_, in which he says: "The epithets of 'parent and child' have been so long applied to Great Britain and her colonies that individuals have adopted them, and we rarely see anything from your side of the water free from the authenticated style of a master to a schoolboy. He seems to say, 'We have, with infinite difficulty and fatigue, got you excused this time; pray be a good boy for the future; do what your papa and mamma bid you, and hasten to return them your most grateful acknowledgments for condescending to let you keep what is your own. If you are a naughty boy, and turn obstinate, and don't mind what your papa and mamma say to you, and pretend to judge for yourself when you are not arrived at years of discretion or capable of distinguishing between good and evil, then everybody will hate you; your parents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely, and their friends will blame _them_.' See what you have brought this child to! If he had been well scourged at first for opposing your absolute will and pleasure and daring to think he had any such thing as property of his own, he would not have had the impudence to repeat the crime."
The first word of resistance to the enforcement of the Stamp Act came from the Northern Neck of Virginia. At Leeds, Richard Henry Lee, born in the same county and same year with George Washington, wrote a set of resolutions which were unanimously adopted by one hundred and fifteen of the most influential of his neighbors. No Virginian could be legally tried but by his peers. No Virginian (for were they not all British subjects?) could be taxed but by consent of a parliament in which he is represented by persons chosen by the people. "Any person using the stamp paper was an abandoned wretch, lost to virtue and public good!" They bound themselves to resist and punish such persons; and at the utmost risk of lives and fortunes to protect any and every citizen who should suffer persecution because of adherence to these resolutions.