Any house, public or private, might be entered at any time; any closet or any cellar might be opened. Neither the bridal chamber nor the room of the dead was sacred on the approach of any petty customs constable or deputy in whose hands a Writ of Assistance had been placed. The antecedent proceedings required no affidavit or any other legal formality. The object was to lay bare the whole privacy of a people on sheer suspicion of smuggling. It could hardly be supposed that our fathers would tamely submit to such an odious and despotic procedure. To have done so would have been to subscribe to a statute for their own enslavement. Nor may we pass from the consideration of these writs and the resistance offered thereto by the patriots of all our colonies without noticing the un-English character of these laws. Of a certainty Englishmen in whatever continent or island of this world would never tolerate such a tyrannical interference with their rights. This was demonstrated not only in America, but in England also. The issuance in England of just such illegal and arbitrary warrants was one of the causes that led to the tremendous agitation headed by John Wilkes. The excitement in that controversy grew, and notwithstanding the repeated arrests of Wilkes and his expulsions from Parliament, his reelection was repeated as often, and his following increased until not only the ministry but the throne itself was shaken by the cry of "Wilkes and Liberty." Nor did this well-timed ebullition of human rights subside until the arbitrary warrants were annulled by a decision of the King's Bench. It was the trial of this issue in America that brought on the Revolution. It was a great cause that had to be pleaded, and the occasion and the city and the man, were as great as the cause. The parties to it were clearly defined, and were set in sharp antagonism. On the one side were the king's officers in the province, headed by the governor. This following included the officers of the customs in particular. It also included the not inconsiderable class of American respectabilities who were feeble in American sentiments, and who belonged by nature and affiliation to the established order. These were the loyalists, destined to be designated as Tories, and to become the bete noire of patriotism. On the other side was a whole phalanx of the common people--a phalanx bounded on the popular side by the outskirt of society and on the high-up side by the intellectual and philosophical patriots who were as pronounced as any for the cause of their country, and with better reason than the reason of the many. The officers of the province elected by the home folks were all patriots, but the appointed officers of the crown were quite unanimous for the prerogative of the crown, holding severe measures should be taken with the resisting colonists, and in particular that the Writs of Assistance were good law and correct policy.