From that time Henry was “the man of the people;” a little ahead of the conservative element, but always in sympathy with the people and always upon the side of the cause which in the end proved right. After his success in “the Parsons’ Case,” he did not lack law business. He was sent in the spring of 1765 to the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg. This was then the site of the Virginia government; having been selected after Jamestown was burned in the Great Rebellion. The people of the colonies--even the loyal Virginians--were beginning to be dissatisfied with the treatment of the mother-country. The Seven Years’ War between England and France had come to an end two years before. It had, of course, cost a great deal of money; in particular, the sending of troops and supplies against the French in America had been very expensive. The English government said that the colonies ought to bear a large share of the war debt; the contest had begun on the American frontier and the English victory had extended colonial territory and trade. On the whole, this was not unfair. Probably the colonies would have agreed to it, if they had been allowed to send representatives to parliament--the English legislative body which has the power of taxation. But the English were not willing to grant that right. Then, said the Americans, “We must not be taxed. ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’” England paid little attention to the protests from America. A Stamp Act was passed,--that is, a law requiring a stamp to be put on all papers to make them legal. The money for these stamps was to be a source of revenue to help pay the war debt. When the matter was being discussed, Virginia protested against this Stamp Act. Nevertheless, in May, 1765, a copy of the act was sent to the Virginia legislature, with the information that it had become a law and must be enforced at a certain time. In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, among stately gentlemen in silks and velvets with their curled and powdered wigs, sat a raw country man dressed in shabby clothes and wearing his own plain hair. This was Patrick Henry. One day he arose and addressed that gathering of high-bred scholarly men and presented certain resolutions to the effect that the people of the colonies had all the rights and privileges of the people of Great Britain,--were like them Englishmen--and that the taxes must, according to “characteristics of British freedom” be laid by the people themselves or by those chosen by them--that only the general assembly of Virginia had a right to lay taxes on Virginians, and that the people were not bound to obey any other laws. In the heated discussion which followed, Henry protested against the despotic action of the king. “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.”-- “Treason, treason!” came the interruption. “May profit by their example,” concluded the orator. “If that be treason make the most of it.”