The Act operated in America like a spark dropped on tinder. First dismay, then anger, then riot and open defiance, showed what the colonists thought and meant to do. Their own agents in London were as little prepared as the ministers themselves for the sudden passion. They had asked for appointments for their friends as stamp distributers under the Act. Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, even asked for a place for himself under it, so different a look did things wear in London from that which they wore at home in the Old Dominion. But these gentlemen learned the temper of America, and changed their own, soon enough. The Act was in no way extraordinary or oppressive in its provisions. It required of the colonists only what was already required in respect of business transactions in England: namely, that revenue stamps, of values varying with the character of the transaction or the amount involved, should be attached to all deeds, wills, policies of insurance, and clearance papers for ships, to legal papers of almost every kind, to all written contracts and most of the business papers used by merchants in their formal dealings, and to all periodical publications and advertisements. The colonies themselves had imposed such taxes; in England they had been used since William and Mary, and had proved eminently convenient and easy of collection. Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, had himself urged that Parliament use them in America, American though he was. Mr. Franklin had taken it for granted, when he saw the Act become law, that they must be submitted to. But America flatly refused obedience, and, except in the newly conquered provinces of Nova Scotia and Canada, the stamps were not used.