Now the colonists were, of course, no more addicted to scalping and other practices "beyond the laws of war" than the English; and the knowledge that these and similar ideas prevailed at home undoubtedly infused a feeling of bitterness into their love for the country of their descent. Moreover, very naturally, they resented the almost ostentatious display of their unimportance in the eyes of English ministers, which became known to them when, to give one example from many, on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, a whole closetful of American despatches was found unopened.[10] They were English, and proud of their descent, a hardy, frugal, independent folk, determined not to be treated as a subject race; the last people in the world to brook interference, and the first to remember that they were colonies, not conquests, brothers, not slaves. They were simple in their habits and in their ideas, and, in some places, Puritanical to excess--the stool of repentance and the scold's gag were still in use, and they had anticipated the publican's "black list"; but as a nation they were thriving, and the towns of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia were so many convincing proofs of their increasing wealth. [10] _Walpoliana._ "Lord Sussex told Sir Denis le Marchant that one of the Under-Secretaries of that day said to him, 'Mr. Grenville lost America because he read the American despatches, which his predecessors had never done;' and so complete a sinecure was the Board of Trade then considered, that a Colonel Bladen, one of the commissioners, happening to apply himself to the duties of his office, the Colonel went by the name of 'Trade,' while his colleagues were called 'The Board.'"--Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.