laws to be passed in Great Britain." William Bayard, a member of this committee of correspondence, visited Boston to confer with the Massachusetts assembly, which on the 22d of the same month adopted a petition in the same direction but less vigorous in text and spirit.

Early in the year 1765 Grenville introduced his bill into the House of Commons. It contained fifty-five articles relating to stamp duties in America, and passed the house on February 7. Previous to its passage the American agents were advised that if the colonies would propose any other means of raising the required revenue the stamp duty would be deferred or laid aside. To this they had no authority to make answer. The bill was approved by the House of Lords in March, without debate, and on March 22 received the king's signature.

The news of the passage of the act reached New York in April, and aroused a storm of indignation—a storm tempered by the consoling information that there was a large body in England whose sympathies were with the colonies. The English advices of May brought word that "without doors we hear every person at all qualified to form any judgment of the matter seemed in favor of the Colonies." When the news reached New York, the assembly was in recess. In Virginia the House of Burgesses was sitting. On May 29 they replied with a series of resolutions, firm in expression, declaratory of their rights and of the unconstitutionality of the measure. It was during the debate on this occasion that Patrick Henry used the memorable words which electrified the continent and in their bold utterance sufficed to make his name immortal. The people of Pennsylvania showed themselves no less jealous of their rights. On April 14 the great guns at the fort and those at the barracks in New York were spiked; a sufficient declaration of the popular temper. And now each incoming packet brought accounts of the growing strength of a sentiment in England in favor of the bold attitude of the colonies. The news arrived of the stirring words of Colonel Barré, the brave companion of Wolfe at the capture of Quebec, in answer to the assumption of Townshend that the colonists were "children of England's planting." "The Americans are Sons of Liberty," retorted Barré in a tone which shook the house.

In comment on this and declarations similar in nature if less vigorous in expression, the press of the colonies took up the phrase.

On May 30 the author of the "Sentinel" series of letters in the "New York Gazette," took Liberty as his text. Interspersed among the didactic phrases which were the fashion of the day are some strong, homely sentiments. "In proportion as Liberty is precious to us should we hold them dear who lift up their hands in defence of it and abhor those who impiously dare attempt to rend it from us." It closed with some verses more patriotic than poetical, but which are a fair sample of the popular rhyme of the period :

Cursed be the man who e'er shall raise

His sacrilegious hand

To drive fair liberty, our praise !

From his own native land.

O may his memory never die,
By future ages curst;
But live to lasting infamy,
Branded of traytors worst.

The history of revolutions shows the power of a phrase. That of Barré struck the strongest chord in the colonial heart. Associations sprung up instantly in every colony under the magic name of Sons of Liberty. The word independence was not as yet breathed aloud, but that the idea was already in the germ appears from a London letter of February 18, 1765, published in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 24, and repeated in New York in May: "Several publications from North America have lately made their appearance here (London) in which the independency of the Colonies is asserted in pretty round terms."

This faction, as Colden terms it, was led in the beginning by the great jurists James Alexander and William Smith the elder, whose mantle of judicial and popular leadership had fallen in the next generation upon William Livingston, William Smith the younger, and John Morin Scott. These three gentlemen, whom Jones styles the young triumvirate, were educated at Yale College. Determined as early as 1752 to pull down church and state, continues Jones, in his savage anathema, and to raise their own government and religion upon its ruins, the triumvirate formed a

club, under the appellation of the Whig Club, which met once in each week at the popular tavern of the King's Arms.*

At this Whig Club, says Jones also, the usual and customary toasts drunk were "the immortal memory of Oliver Cromwell, of Hugh Peters, of General Ludlow," and others of the regicides. They had an organ in the "Independent Reflector."

From an early date (1760) there had been a resolute resistance by the seamen of the colonies to the nefarious practice of impressment from the market and wood boats, and from the merchantmen which visited our harbors, nowhere more determined than at the port of New-York. In 1764 four fishermen were pressed from their vessels and carried on board a tender from a man-of-war on Next day, the captain of the tender ventuthe Halifax station. ring on shore, the boat was suddenly seized and dragged through the streets to the middle of the green in the Fields (City Hall Park), where it was burned and destroyed. Meanwhile the captain was escorted quietly to the coffee-house which stood on the southwest corner of Wall and Queen (later Water) streets, where he disclaimed all responsibility for the seizure and gave an order for the release of the fishmermen. From the suddenness of the appearance, the orderly determination, and the equally sudden disappearance of the crowd or mob or gathering, which are noted in the recital of this affair, Dawson claims, and not unfairly, that But they were an organized body; "minute men," he calls them. the Sons of Liberty was an institution of a more permanent character and a more defined organization than can be discerned in the ephemeral actions cited.

In the months of June and July news arrived of the appointment of stamp agents for the several colonies, and of the official announcement that the act would be enforced on November 1. As the sentiment of resistance was general, a concert of action by the several colonies was a natural corollary. Priority in a demand

*Contemporary authority places the tavern under this sign in Broad street, near the Long In 1754, the sign was hanging at the Bridge, under the management of Richard Cooke in 1750. same place, then described as opposite the Royal Exchange. In 1757, the tavern kept by Cooke appears in the public prints as the Gentlemen's Exchange Coffee House. This building was on the northeast corner of Broad and Dock (now Pearl) streets, opposite the well known Fraunces' Tavern, and was pulled down in 1890. In 1764 the old sign was carried by Edward Barden to the upper end of Broadway, facing the Commons. The King's Arms was evidently the great Whig

resort.

In that year the crew of the Sampson of Bristol, refused to obey the signal guns of H. M. S. Winchester to bring to; and, firing upon the man-of-war's barge on attempting to board her, a number of men were killed. The Samson fortunately got into harbor, and the men escaped; the people protecting them and concealing them from the reach of the sheriff and the detachment of militia ordered to his assistance.

so universal cannot be safely claimed, nor yet to which individual in the several committees of correspondence the credit of suggesting it is due. The House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay brought the subject to a focus by agreeing to a committee of representatives or of burgesses on the condition of the colonies, to consider of a dutiful, loyal, and humble representation to his Majesty and parliament for relief. This meeting was set for the first Tuesday in October, and New-York was designated as the place of assemblage.

New-York was naturally selected for the place of meeting as the most convenient because it was the geographical, political, and commercial center of the colonies, accessible by water as by land. It must not be forgotten that every one of the original thirteen colonies was a seaboard settlement: each with a seaport of its own; each with its direct communication with England for commerce, and each with some coastwise trade; each independent, and jealous of its independence of the others; and each loyal in its own measure to the parent government, as its own interests were consulted in the enforcement or the relaxation of the laws of trade. While each, therefore, might have stood ready to take its chances against its neighbors, even under their onerous exactions, the idea of a danger which they must suffer or avert in common naturally brought them together, and there was no thought of local jealousy when NewYork was chosen as the meeting place for the most important assemblage known in their history. New-York was the natural center of influence. Her geographical position, midway between the more populous settlements to the eastward and southward, which the broad Hudson and the great bay at its mouth divided, was the natural key to the continent. The exposed situation of her northern border to French and Indian invasion had been a concern at all times to all the colonies. Upon her safety hung the entire system of English settlements. Moreover no colony was in such direct sympathy with England. It must be remembered that it was an English conquest, not an English colonial settlement, and as such was more in touch with the ideas of the England of that day than its neighbors of New England or of Pennsylvania. New-York was a purely commercial city whose life was English trade; most of her merchants were Britons born or in close relation with their kindred across the sea. Favored beyond any of the provincial cities by its climate, the charm of its natural scenery, the variety and abundance of food, native and

tropical, of water and land supply, and already the seat of a thriving trade, it was the coveted post of British officials. Here they found church and state very much as at home; a wealthy class whose manners and habits were formed on the easy home pattern, whose residences and tables compared with any of those even of the richest English gentry, and whose native British roughness had been tempered by a reasonable infusion of Dutch and Huguenot blood.

Communication with home was constant by the well appointed packets, and in almost every journal of the day notice may be found of "gentlemen intending for England," or of the return of some wellknown traveler. New-York was therefore the natural choice for the meeting of the colonial committee.

It may be stated here that the colonies were as conscious of their power as of their rights. The white male population between sixteen and sixty years of age of the entire territory was estimated at the time at three hundred thousand: a force, when combined, quite sufficient for any and all purposes of defense against any enemy