INTRODUCTION. 57 
put in motion to resist the encroachments of parliament; and it is not impossible 
that the adaptation of the plan to such a purpose, induced its rejection by the 
ministry, while the fear that it would strengthen the royal power caused it to be 
disapproved with equal promptness by the colonial assemblies.* 
The passage of the stamp act in 1765, which levied imposts in violation of a 
principle which all the American colonies had asserted, and thus far persever- 
ingly maintained ; and which provided for the execution of that impolitic mea- 
sure by means and agents equally obnoxious, produced universal exasperation. 
The act was printed and circulated in the streets of New-York, with the title 
of “The Folly of England and the Ruin of America.” A congress of deputies met 
in New-York in October, 1765. New-York was represented by Robert R. Li- 
vingston, John Cruger, Philip Livingston, William Bayard, and Leonard Lispe- 
nard. Cadwallader Colden, then heutenant-governor, announced that the con- 
gress was unconstitutional, unprecedented and unlawful, and he should give it no 
countenance. The congress solemnly protested that the people of the colonies 
were entitled to all the rights of Englishmen; that no taxes could be imposed 
upon them without their consent; that their only legislative representatives were 
the provincial assemblies; and that the stamp act, passed by the parliament of 
Great Britain, without the consent of those assemblies, was subversive of the 
rights and liberties of the people. The manifestations of popular indignation 
and resistance, obliged the lieutenant-governor, Colden, to surrender the stamps 
which had been sent over for the use of the province —a concession which he 
made under protest, and to avert the calamities of a civil war. The law was 
successfully resisted, and in the subsequent year was repealed ; but the moment 
of the final controversy was now hastening, and every effort of the ministry to 
maintain the power of the crown, served only to inflame a spirit of resistance 
which had become general throughout the colonies. 
* Dunwap, 
InTR. 8 
