On the flood tide of a prosperous business and forensic fame, in the full enjoyment of domestic felicity and social intercourse with friends, Mr. Chase glided smoothly along until his country began to writhe under kingly oppression. The stamp act, the first born of the pernicious revenue system devised by the putrescent British ministry, met with a hostile reception in Annapolis. Mr. Chase, aided by a band of kindred spirits under the cognomen of the “sons of liberty,” forcibly seized and destroyed the newly imported stamps and burnt in effigy the stamp distributor. No further violence was then committed. The king’s officers opened a newspaper battery against this “furious mob,” and directed their whole artillery at Mr. Chase, complimenting him with the courtly names of “busy, restless incendiary; a ringleader of mobs, a foul-mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction; a common disturber of the public tranquillity, a promoter of the lawless excesses of the multitude,” and similar emphatic appellations—conferring upon this young patriot a diploma of honour little anticipated by them. His answers to these vituperations were charged with strong and conclusive logic, keen and withering sarcasm. This brought him into the political field, and so delighted were the people with the manner he handled the hirelings of the crown that they elected him to the colonial assembly. There he took a conspicuous part and became the uncompromising opposer of all measures that were not within the pale of the constitution or that were tinctured with oppression. So strongly was he in favour of liberal principles and rational liberty, that he gave his whole influence and vote in favour of the repeal of the law that compelled the people to support the clergy, by which the stipend of his father was reduced one half. Agreeably to the laws of primogeniture then in force, this was voting money out of his own pocket in order to impart greater freedom to the people at large. By his bold and independent course he became an object for the persecution of the creatures of the crown and an object of pride and admiration with the people. But his enemies found him a bramble full of the keenest thorns and were unmercifully scarified every time they approached him. His tongue, his pen, his logic and his sarcasm were as blighting as the sirocco of Sahara.