George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[326] educated in this happy country, can consider the

chap. XVII.} 1765. Sept.

usurpations that are meditating for all our countrymen, and all their posterity, without the utmost agonies of heart, and many tears.

Such were the genuine sentiments of New England, uttered by John Adams, in words which, in part, were promptly laid before the king in council In Maryland, Daniel Dulany, an able lawyer, not surpassed in ability by any of the crown lawyers in the House of Commons, ‘a patriot councillor, inclined to serve the people,’ discussed the propriety of the Stamp Act, not before America only, but seeking audience of England. He admitted that the colonies were subordinate to the supreme national council; that the British parliament had the unquestionable right to legislate on the trade of the colonies; that trade may frequently be most properly regulated by duties on imports and exports; that parliament is itself to determine what regulations are most proper; and that if they should produce an incidental revenue, they are not, therefore, unwarrantable.

But in reply to the arguments of the crown lawyers, and the ministerial defenders of the Stamp Act, he argued, with minute and elaborate learning, that the late regulations for the colonies were not just, because the Commons of England, in which the Americans were neither actually nor virtually represented, had no right, by the common law or the British constitution, to give and grant the property of the Commons in America; that they were rightfully void, as their validity rested only on the power of those who framed them to carry them into effect; that they were not lenient, the taxes imposed being excessive and unequal; that they were not politic, as Great