Yet these resounding phrases doubtless meant something less to
Americans of 1764 than one is apt to suppose. The rights of
freemen had so often, in the proceedings of colonial assemblies
as well as in the newspaper communications of many a Brutus and
Cato, been made to depend upon withholding a governor's salary or
defining precisely how he should expend a hundred pounds or so,
that moderate terms could hardly be trusted to cope with the
serious business of parliamentary taxation. "Reduced from the
character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary
slaves" was in fact hardly more than a conventional and dignified
way of expressing a firm but entirely respectful protest.

The truth is, therefore, that while everyone protested in such
spirited terms as might occur to him, few men in these early days
supposed the new laws would not take effect, and fewer still
counseled the right or believed in the practicability of forcible
resistance. "We yield obedience to the act granting duties,"
declared the Massachusetts Assembly. "Let Parliament lay what
duties they please on us," said James Otis; "it is our duty to
submit and patiently bear them till they be pleased to relieve
us." Franklin assured his friends that the passage of the Stamp
Act could not have been prevented any more easily than the sun's
setting, recommended that they endure the one mischance with the
same equanimity with which they faced the other necessity, and
even saw certain advantages in the way of self-discipline which
might come of it through the practice of a greater frugality. Not
yet perceiving the dishonor attaching to the function of
distributing stamps, he did his two friends, Jared Ingersoll of
Connecticut and John Hughes of Pennsylvania, the service of
procuring for them the appointment to the new office; and Richard