patriot Otis's denunciation of them, became almost universal;
while the people had been roused to a sharp sense of their
situation, in view of the tyrannous attitude of England towards
the Colonies, and the next step taken by the Crown, under Prime
Minister Grenville, in threatening them with the no less hated
Stamp Tax. This new fiscal infatuation on the part-of the
English ministry strained the relations of the Colonies toward
the Crown to almost the point of rupture. It was, moreover, an
unwise exhibition of English stubbornness and impolicy, since it
revealed the mistake which England fell into at the time of
considering the Settlements of the New World as Colonial
possessions to be held solely for the financial benefit of the
mother country, rather than for their own advancement and
material well-being. It is true, that the Seven Years' War,
which had been waged chiefly for the protection of the American
dependencies of the Crown, had left a heavy burden of debt upon
England which she naturally looked to the Colonies in some
measure to repay. But the Colonies had ready their argument--
they objected to being taxed without their consent, and without
representation in the British Parliament, besides being, as they
thought, sufficiently oppressed by the burden of customs' duties
already imposed upon them. The spirit of resistance therefore
grew, and was ere long to take a more determined and, to England,
fatal form, for the Stamp Act, though later on repealed, was
passed, in spite of the protests of the Colonial Assemblies and
the increasing soreness of feeling in America against the mother
country.

The like service James Otis did for the community of the New
World in opposing the Writs of Assistance he also did in opposing