172 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
The Americans had no alternative to suggest except 
a system of requisitions, — in other words, asking the 
thirteen separate legislatures to vote supplies. With 
that system they had floundered along for three-quar- 
ters of a century, and with it they were to flounder for 
a quarter of a century more until their eyes should be 
opened. Grenville was tired of so much floundering, 
and so he brought in his Stamp Act, about which one 
of the most notable things is that Parliament passed 
it with scarcely a word of debate. There was no un- 
friendly intent in the measure. It was not designed 
to take money from American pockets for British pur- 
poses. Every penny was to be used in America for 
the defence of the colonies. Some of the stamps, 
indeed, were higher in price than they need have been, 
but on the whole there was little in the Stamp Act for 
the Americans to object to except to the principle 
upon which the whole thing was based. On that 
point Parliament was not sufficiently awake, though 
some demonstrations had already been made in Amer- 
ica and such men as Hutchinson had warned Grenville 
of the danger. 
When it was known in America that the Stamp 
Act had become law, the resistance took two forms: 
there was mob violence, and there was the sober appeal 
to reason. From the outset the law was nullified; 
people simply would not touch the stamps or have 
anything to do with them. The story of the riots in 
New York and Boston needs no repetition, but one of 
the disgraceful scenes in Boston calls for mention 
in order to point the contrast which we shall have to 
make hereafter. Thomas Hutchinson, the foremost 
scholar of his time in America and the foremost writer, 
