The instructions were written by John Adams, who would ten years later become a key figure in the American Revolution and ultimately be elected the second President of the United States in 1796.
Negative reaction to the tax in British America was concerned not only with economic hardship imposed by it but also by constitutional issues of taxation without representation and enforcement by courts without juries.
In May, 1765 in Virginia, the House of Burgesses passed a series of resolutions promoted by Patrick Henry which objected specifically to the imposition of tax without representation.
In preparation for the planned meeting which would eventually be realized as the Stamp Act Congress, John Adams drafted instructions issued to the town's representative, Ebenezer Thayer, Esq., outlining opposition to the tax on several constitutional grounds.
Adams argued that the imposition of the tax to be enforced by judges without benefit of a jury trial was a severe violation of fundamental rights.
Such is our loyalty to the King, our veneration for both houses of Parliament, and our affection for all our fellow-subjects in Britain, that measures which discover any unkindness in that country towards us are the more sensibly and intimately felt.
We have called this a burthensome tax, because the duties are so numerous and so high, and the embarrassments to business in this infant, sparsely settled country so great, that it would be totally impossible for the people to subsist under it, if we had no controversy at all about the right and authority of imposing it.
Considering the present scarcity of money, we have reason to think, the execution of that act for a short space of time would drain the country of its cash, strip multitudes of all their property, and reduce them to absolute beggary.
We cannot help asserting, therefore, that this part of the act will make an essential change in the constitution of juries, and it is directly repugnant to the Great Charter itself; for, by that charter, “no amerciament shall be assessed, but by the oath of honest and lawful men of the vicinage;” and, “no freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, or liberties of free customs, nor passed upon, nor condemned, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.” So that this act will “make such a distinction, and create such a difference between” the subjects in Great Britain and those in America, as we could not have expected from the guardians of liberty in “both.” As these, sir, are our sentiments of this act, we, the freeholders and other inhabitants, legally assembled for this purpose, must enjoin it upon you, to comply with no measures or proposals for countenancing the same, or assisting in the execution of it, but by all lawful means, consistent with our allegiance to the King, and relation to Great Britain, to oppose the execution of it, till we can hear the success of the cries and petitions of America for relief.
Good and wholesome laws we have already for the preservation of the peace; and we apprehend there is no further danger of tumult and disorder, to which we have a well-grounded aversion; and that any extraordinary and expensive exertions would tend to exasperate the people and endanger the public tranquillity, rather than the contrary.