[5] Daniel Dulany, a Maryland attorney and politician, disputed this assertion in a widely read pamphlet, arguing that the relations between the Americans and the English electors were "a knot too infirm to be relied on" for proper representation, "virtual" or otherwise.

[13] Post-war expenses were expected to remain high because the Bute ministry decided in early 1763 to keep ten thousand British regulars in the American colonies, which would cost about £225,000 per year, equal to £42 million today.

[20][21] John Adams wrote disparagingly of the deployment, writing that "Revenue is still demanded from America, and appropriated to the maintenance of swarms of officers and pensioners in idleness and luxury".

They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God's earth....

He argued: At all Events, they could not maintain such an Independency, without a Strong Naval Force, which it must forever be in the Power of Great Britain to hinder them from having: And whilst His Majesty hath 7000 Troops kept up within them, & in the Great Lakes upon the back of six of them, with the Indians at Command, it seems very easy, provided the Governors & principal Civil Officers are Independent of the Assemblies for their Subsistence, & commonly Vigilant, to prevent any Steps of that kind from being taken.

Many colonists or their ancestors had fled England specifically to escape the influence and power of such state-sanctioned religious institutions, and they feared that this was the first step to reinstating the old ways in the colonies.

[46] As the act imposed a tax on many different types of paper items, including newspapers, contracts, deeds, wills, claims, indentures and many other types of legal documents, its effect would be felt in many different professions and trades, resulting in wide spread protests from newspapers, citizens, and even attacks on public officials, tax collectors and their offices and homes.

Benjamin Franklin had raised this as far back as 1754 at the Albany Congress when he wrote, "That it is suppos'd an undoubted Right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own Consent given thro' their Representatives.

Thomas Whately enunciated this theory in a pamphlet that readily acknowledged that there could be no taxation without consent, but the facts were that at least 75% of British adult males were not represented in Parliament because of property qualifications or other factors.

Resolved, That by the two royal Charters, granted by King James the First, the Colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all Liberties, Privileges, and Immunities of Denizens and natural Subjects, to all Intents and Purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the Realm of England.

[62] John Adams complained that the London ministry was intentionally trying "to strip us in a great measure of the means of knowledge, by loading the Press, the colleges, and even an Almanack and a News-Paper, with restraints and duties.

Benjamin Franklin had created an informal network so that each one routinely reprinted news, editorials, letters and essays from the others, thus helping form a common American voice.

[64] The August 1, 1768, issue of the Pennsylvania Chronicle, established by William Goddard, printed on the front page a four-column article of an address made at the State House (Independence Hall) against the Stamp Act, and other excessive tax laws passed without colonial representation in the British Parliament.

David Ramsay, a patriot and historian from South Carolina, wrote of this phenomenon shortly after the American Revolution: It was fortunate for the liberties of America, that newspapers were the subject of a heavy stamp duty.

The article detailed a violent protest that occurred in New York in December, 1765, then described the riot's participants as "imperfect" and labeled the group's ideas as "contrary to the general sense of the people.

Several newspaper editors were involved with the Sons of Liberty, such as William Bradford of The Pennsylvania Journal and Benjamin Edes of The Boston Gazette, and they echoed the group's sentiments in their publications.

Printers were greatly relieved when the law was nullified in the following spring, and the repeal asserted their positions as a powerful voice (and compass) for public opinion.

Historian Gary B. Nash wrote: Whether stimulated externally or ignited internally, ferment during the years from 1761 to 1766 changed the dynamics of social and political relations in the colonies and set in motion currents of reformist sentiment with the force of a mountain wind.

Andrew Oliver was a distributor of stamps for Massachusetts who was hanged in effigy on 14 August 1765 "from a giant elm tree at the crossing of Essex and Orange Streets in the city's South End."

[83] As news spread of the reasons for Andrew Oliver's resignation, violence and threats of aggressive acts increased throughout the colonies, as did organized groups of resistance.

The mob evicted the family, destroyed the furniture, tore down the interior walls, emptied the wine cellar, scattered Hutchinson's collection of Massachusetts historical papers, and pulled down the building's cupola.

Nash concludes that this attack was more than just a reaction to the Stamp Act: But it is clear that the crowd was giving vent to years of resentment at the accumulation of wealth and power by the haughty prerogative faction led by Hutchinson.

Behind every swing of the ax and every hurled stone, behind every shattered crystal goblet and splintered mahogany chair, lay the fury of a plain Bostonian who had read or heard the repeated references to impoverished people as "rable" and to Boston's popular caucus, led by Samuel Adams, as a "herd of fools, tools, and synchophants.

A crowd built a gallows near the Town House in Newport on 27 August, where they carried effigies of three officials appointed as stamp distributors: Augustus Johnson, Dr. Thomas Moffat, and lawyer Martin Howard.

That night, the crowd was led by a poor man named John Weber, and they attacked the houses of Moffat and Howard, where they destroyed walls, fences, art, furniture, and wine.

Crowds took to the streets for four days of demonstrations, uncontrolled by the local leaders, culminating in an attack by two thousand people on Governor Cadwallader Colden's home and the burning of two sleighs and a coach.

[92][93] Sir Henry Moore, who replaced Colden as provincial governor of New York, met with the influential Isaac Sears, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, in an effort to maintain peace and restore order to the city.

[101] In neighboring Nova Scotia a number of former New England residents objected, but recent British immigrants and London-oriented business interests based in Halifax, the provincial capital were more influential.

Throughout the Stamp Act Crisis, the Sons of Liberty professed continued loyalty to the King because they maintained a "fundamental confidence" that Parliament would do the right thing and repeal the tax.

Historian John Miller observes, "The composition of this Stamp Act Congress ought to have been convincing proof to the British government that resistance to parliamentary taxation was by no means confined to the riffraff of colonial seaports.