Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/254

 the end, the shipowners of London, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, and Glasgow, with the manufacturing towns in Lancashire, petitioned the Legislature for relief; and, in 1766, the obnoxious Stamp Act was repealed. This repeal, though received with great joy in all parts of England, and re-echoed by the Americans, was materially modified on the other side the Atlantic by the preamble of the Declaratory Act which censured the American legislatures for assuming the right of taxation in the colonies, declaring the American colonies subordinate to the English crown and parliament, whose legislative authority, it was asserted, extended to American subjects in all cases whatsoever. The resumption, however, of navigation and commerce produced the most salutary effects, and harmony was for a season restored between the two countries.

But in the interval between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the following year a new state of things had arisen. The notion of self-government had taken hold of the American agitators. In their provincial assemblies they set the Declaratory Act and the authority of the mother-country at defiance, while in England, on the other hand, it was deemed essential to assert the supremacy of the Legislature by even more effectual proceedings.

Accordingly a fresh American Taxation Act was passed in 1767, imposing import duties on tea, glass, and other articles, the object being to assert the right of taxing the colonies. It was, however, found impossible to collect the new duties. The people of Boston, Massachusetts, were conspicuous for their vio-*