Even in the midst of the universal rejoicings over the repeal of the Stamp Act the temper of several of the colonial assemblies had risen at reading the “Declaratory Act” which accompanied the repeal, and which asserted the absolute legal right of Parliament “to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” They had declared very flatly then that Parliament had no legal authority whatever in America except such as it might exercise by the consent of the colonial assemblies,—so far had their thought and their defiant purpose advanced within the year. There were conservative men in the colonies as well as radical, men who hated revolution and loved the just and sober ways of law; and there was as strong a sentiment of loyalty on one side the sea as on the other. But even conservative men dreaded to see Parliament undertake to break down the independence of America. Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, whose house the rioters in Boston had wantonly looted when they were mad against the Stamp Act, had been born and bred in the colony, and loved her welfare as honestly as any man; but he was lieutenant-governor, an officer of the crown, and would have deemed it dishonor not to uphold the authority he represented. Mr. Otis, on the other hand, had resigned his office as Advocate General under the crown to resist the writs of assistance. The public-spirited gentlemen who had opposed Mr. Henry’s fiery resolutions in the Virginian House of Burgesses did not fear usurpation or hate tyranny less than he; but they loved the slow processes of argument and protest and strictly legal opposition more than he did, and were patient enough to keep within bounds. They feared to shake an empire by pursuing a right too impetuously. Men of every temper and of every counsel made up the various people of the colonies, and there were men of equal patriotism on both sides of the rising quarrel. [Illustration: LANDING TROOPS AT BOSTON, 1768] And yet the most moderate and slow-tempered grew uneasy at Mr. Townshend’s measures. Mr. John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, wrote and published a series of letters,—_Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer_, he called them,—which stated as pointedly, as boldly, as earnestly as any man could wish, the constitutional rights of self-government which the colonists cherished and thought imperilled by the new acts of Parliament,—and yet Mr. Dickinson was as steady a loyalist as any man in America, as little likely to countenance rebellion, as well worth heeding by those who wished to compose matters by wise and moderate counsels. His firm-spoken protests were, in fact, read and pondered on both sides the water (1767), and no one could easily mistake their significance. [Illustration: LIST OF NAMES OF THOSE WHO WOULD NOT CONFORM]