[wirarow] THOMAS HUTCHINSON 67 
duty was imposed on all legal documents. The colonists denied the 
right of the [Imperial Parliament to impose taxes without their consent. 
The Stamp Act was repealed in a year, but the obnoxious principle of 
taxation without representation was maintained by a light duty on tea, 
and some other articles. 
The colonists “were only asked,” says Hosmer, “to bear their 
share in the burden of the empire, by contributing to the sum required 
for maintaining ten thousand men, intended primarily for their own 
defense against Indians and French. But here came in the grievance: 
the tax was demanded by a body in which there was no representation 
of the people taxed, and ‘that taxation and representation are insepar- 
ably connected, lay at the root of the English conception of political 
liberty. 
“ Before the war, the American civil and military establishments 
had cost only £70,000 a year. In 1764 they cost £350,000 : this addi- 
tional expense was incurred on American account, and Lord Grenville 
(the English Premier) thought America should contribute toward it. 
He claimed that the stamp tax was the easiest to manage ; also the most 
equitable that could be devised, since it would spare the poor and fall 
upon property. 
““T am not, however, set upon this tax, said Greville. ‘If the 
Americans dislike it, and prefer any other method, I shall be content. 
Write therefore to your several Colonies, and if they choose any other 
mode, I shall be satisfied, provided the money be but raised.’ ” 
Hutchinson himself declared: “It cannot be good policy to tax 
the Americans: it will prove prejudicial to their natural interests. You 
will lose more than you will gain. Britain reaps the profit of all their 
trade and of the increase of their substance.” ' 
“The position of Hutchinson,” says Hosmer, “ was a most trying 
one. The whole course of government he disapproved; he had been 
5 > 
ready to cross the ocean to remonstrate for the Colony against the 
impolitic treatment. On the other hand, the disloyal tone which daily 
grew more rife about him was utterly against his mind. 
But the Province to which he had been like a father was growing away 
from him, and before the summer ended, he was to receive a blow as 
ruthless and ungrateful as it was possible to administer.” 
The popular hostility to the loyal Lieutenant-Governor culminated 
in this wise : 
On the 26th of August, 1765, while at supper in his town house 
at Boston, a mob approached. Hutchinson directed his family to fly, 
but his motherless daughters refused to go without him. He thereupon 
withdrew with them to a place of safety, and in a few minutes the 
house—the best house in the province, a stately and well-built colonial 
