The
resolutions were passed, as the "Parliamentary History" records, "almost
without debate," on the 6th of March.[34] But the intelligence was
received in every part of the Colonies with an indignant
dissatisfaction, which astonished even their own agents in England.[35]
Formidable riots broke out in several provinces. In Massachusetts the
man who had been appointed Distributor of Stamps was burnt in effigy;
the house of the Lieutenant-governor was attacked by a furious mob, who
avowed their determination to murder him if he fell into their hands;
and resolutions were passed by the Assemblies of the different States to
convene a General Congress at New York in the autumn, to organize a
resistance to the tax, and to take the general state of affairs into
consideration.
Before, however, that time came, a series of events having no connection
with these transactions had led to a change of ministry in England, and
the new cabinet was less inclined to carry matters with a high hand.
Indeed, even the boldest statesman could hardly have learned the state
of feeling which had been excited in America without apprehension, and
those who had the chief weight in the new administration were not men to
imperil the state by an insistance on abstract theories of right and
prerogative.
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