George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

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Chapter 16:

How the Stamp officers were Handled in America— administration of Rockingham.

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August—September, 1765.

Six weeks and more before the news of the change of

chap. XVI.} 1765. Aug.

ministry was received in Boston, and while the passions of the public mind throughout the continent were still rising, Jared Ingersoll, of Connecticut, late agent for that province, now its stamp-master, arrived from England at Boston; and the names of the stamp distributors were published on the eighth of August. But Grenville's craftily devised policy of employing Americans failed from the beginning. ‘It will be as in the West Indies,’ clamored the people; ‘there the negro overseers are the most cruel.’

‘Had you not rather,’ said a friend of Ingersoll, ‘these duties should be collected by your brethren than by foreigners?’ ‘No, vile miscreant! indeed we had not,’ answered Dagget,¹ of New Haven. ‘If your father must die, is there no defect in filial duty in becoming his executioner, that the hangman's part of the estate may be retained in the family? If the ruin of your country is decreed, are you free from ’