as customhouse vessels, and naval officers, people said, were degraded into customhouse officers of the King of Spain. The effect was a crushing blow to the trade of America. And, as if to render the position of the colonists still more distressing, in 1764 a series of enactments were made, laying duties upon various articles for the benefit of England,--at the same time declaring for the first time the right of England to raise a revenue from her colonies; and while the quantity of money in America had been considerably diminished by the stoppage of the free trade, the present Act was rendered more irksome by ordering all the duties imposed to be paid in hard cash into the English Exchequer. It was coupled, too, with another Act stopping the use of paper money in America. Taken together, this series of arrangements had therefore produced the following effects--a large branch of commerce, the chief source of ready money, was destroyed; at the same time more ready money was demanded by England; and the colonists saw themselves prevented even from carrying on their domestic trade in the ordinary channels. [Sidenote: The Stamp Act.] These measures had produced retaliation from the Americans; it had been determined that as little trade as possible should be carried on with England. Lamb was not to be eaten, and lambs were not killed, in order to increase the stock of sheep for the supply of the wool which was England's great manufacture; and in all other possible ways men denied themselves European luxuries. It has been said that the preamble of the Act for the new duties stated the necessity for raising a revenue from the English colonies, and at the same time Grenville had proposed a Stamp Act as one of the means of raising such revenue. With singular want of wisdom, though with kindly feeling, he put off bringing in a Bill for the establishment of this tax, which would be an article of excise or inland duty, till the assemblies of the different colonies had stated their views with regard to it. The Americans, though probably without any real legal grounds, drew a line between the levying of customs and the imposing of an inland tax. It is probable that by the strict letter of the law they were liable to both, for even the Long Parliament had only granted temporary exemptions from taxation. But when their attention was drawn to the intentions and claims of the English Parliament, and when a tax, new in fact though perhaps not in principle, was suggested to them, and a year given them to talk it over, it was natural that their opposition should be roused. Five colonies sent petitions against the new measures, but they were wholly disregarded, and the Stamp Act passed without much opposition in Parliament. [Sidenote: The King's illness.] [Sidenote: The Regency Bill. 1755.]