C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

[229] was to outbreak and violence. On one occasion in Boston, it showed itself in the lawlessness of a mob, of a most formidable character, even as is now charged. Liberty, in her struggles, is too often driven to force. But the town, at a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, called without delay, on the motion of the opponents of the Stamp Act, with James Otis as Chairman, condemned the outrage. Eager in hostility to the execution of the Act, Boston cherished municipal order, and constantly discountenanced all tumult, violence and illegal proceedings. On these two grounds she then stood; and her position was widely recognized.

Thus was the Stamp Act annulled, even before its actual repeal, which was pressed with assiduity by petition and remonstrance, on the next meeting of Parliament. Among the potent influences was the entire concurrence of the merchants, and especially a remonstrance against the Stamp Act by the merchants of New York, like that now made against the Slave Act by the merchants of Boston. Some sought at first only for its modification. Even James Otis began with this moderate aim. The King himself showed a disposition to yield to this extent. But Franklin, who was then in England, when asked whether the Colonies would submit to the Act, if mitigated in certain particulars, replied: ‘No, never, unless compelled by force of arms.’ Then it was, that the great Commoner, William Pitt, said:

‘Sir, I have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy Act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this House imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty I mean to exercise. No gentleman ought to be afraid to exercise it. It is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might and ought to have profited. The gentleman tells us America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of slaves, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest. I would not debate a particular point of law with the gentleman; but I draw my ideas of Freedom from the vital powers of the British Constitution—not from the crude and fallacious notions too much relied upon, as if we were but in the morning of liberty. I can acknowledge no veneration for any procedure, law, or ordinance, that is repugnant to reason and the first elements of our Constitution. The Americans have been wronged. They have been driven to madness. Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is really my opinion. It is, that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, totally and immediately, and that the reason for the repeal be assigned because it was founded on an erroneous principle.’