The people venerated Pitt; they despised the very name of Stuart. They deprecated the influence of the king's mother as being unfavorable to popular freedom. A placard which appeared upon the Royal Exchange, bearing, in large letters, the significant expression of "No petticoat government--no Scotch minister--no Lord George Sackville," prefigured those popular tumults which soon afterward disturbed the metropolis and extended to the American colonies. That placard was the harbinger of that great DECLARATION, the adoption of which by a representative Congress of the Anglo-American people fifteen years afterward, is the occasion of our National Anniversary.
From the accession of Charles the Second, just one hundred years before George the Third ascended the throne, the English colonies in America struggled manfully for prosperity against the unjust and illiberal commercial policy of Great Britain. With a strange obtuseness of perception in regard to the elements of national prosperity, which the truths of modern political economy now clearly illustrate to the common mind, the British government sought to fill its coffers from the products of colonial industry, by imposing upon their commerce such severe restrictions that its expansion was almost prohibited. The wisdom and prudent counsels of men like Robert Walpole were of no avail; and, down to the accession of George the Third, the industrial pursuits of the colonists, under the regulations of the Board of Trade, were subjected to restraints and impositions which amounted to actual oppression. The Americans often petitioned for justice, but in vain. Continental wars continually drained the imperial treasury, and the inventive genius of British statesmen continually planned new schemes for the creation of a revenue adequate to meet the enormous expenditures of government. Despite the Navigation Act and kindred measures, sometimes enforced with rigor, and sometimes with laxity, the American Colonies grew rich and powerful. Despite the injustice of the mother country, they were eminently loyal. During the long war between France and England which was waged in the wilds of America, and which called into fierce action the savage tribes of the forests, the colonies contributed men and money with a lavish prodigality to sustain the honor of Great Britain, and the Gallic power on our continent was crushed, chiefly by provincial strength. The fidelity, the generosity, the prowess, and the loyalty of the Americans commanded the admiration of England, and should have excited her grateful desires to reciprocate and requite the service. On the contrary, the exhibition of the wealth and strength of the colonies during that war, excited her jealousy, led to greater exactions, and were made a pretense for more flagrant acts of injustice. She seemed to regard the Americans as industrious bees, working in a hive in her own apiary, in duty bound to lay up stores of honey for her especial use, and entitled to only the poor requital of a little treacle.
Relying upon the steady loyalty of the colonists, and their pecuniary ability, the advisers of the king looked to them for unceasing and substantial aid in replenishing the exhausted exchequer. Hitherto many of the commercial regulations had been evaded; now a rigid enforcement of the revenue laws was commenced. By the advice of Bute the king determined to "reform the American charters." Secret agents were sent to traverse the colonies for the purpose of ascertaining the temper of the people, of conciliating men of wealth and influence, and of obtaining such information as might be useful to ministers in preparing a plan for drawing a portion of the surplus wealth of the Americans into the imperial treasury. The first reform measure was the issuing of _Writs of Assistance_ to revenue officers. These were warrants to custom-house officials, giving them and their deputies a general power to enter houses and stores where it might be suspected that contraband goods were concealed. This was a violation of one of the dearest principles of Magna Charta which recognizes the house of every Briton as his castle. The idea of such latitude being given to "the meanest deputy of a deputy's deputy" created general indignation and alarm. It might cover the grossest abuses, and no man's privacy would be free from the intrusions of these ministerial hirelings. The colonies saw in this the budding germ of despotism, and resolved to oppose its growth. The voice of James Otis the younger, a ripe scholar of six-and-thirty, and then the Advocate General of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, first denounced the scheme and declared the great political postulate which became the basis of all subsequent resistance to kingly domination, that "TAXATION, WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, IS TYRANNY." Like the deep and startling tones of an alarm-bell, echoing from hill to hill, his bold eloquence aroused the hearts of thinking men from the Penobscot to the St.