When the Massachusetts Assembly, in 1754, sought to raise money for the expenses of the war then impending, its debate upon an inquisitorial excise bill levying a tax on wines and liquors incited violent opposition. Samuel Cooper launched at the plan a pamphlet called _The Crisis_.[422] Another brief attack appeared with nothing on the title but _The Eclipse, MDCCLIV._[423] Daniel Fowle, however, was accused of printing another satirical account of the Representatives’ proceedings, which was published in 1754 as _The Monster of Monsters_, and the “Thomas Thumb, Esq.,” of the title is supposed to have shielded Samuel Waterhouse. Fowle was arrested, and the common hangman was directed to burn the pamphlet in King Street.[424] Sabin says that not more than three or four copies of the tract escaped, but the _Brinley Catalogue_ shows two.[425] After his release Fowle printed in Boston the next year (1755) _A total Eclipse of Liberty. Being a true and faithful account of the arraignment and examination of Daniel Fowle before the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay, Oct. 24, 1754, barely on suspicion of being concerned in printing and publishing a pamphlet, entitled The Monster of Monsters. Written by himself._ An _Appendix to the late Total Eclipse_, etc., appeared in 1756.[426] In May, 1755, a stamp act went into operation in the province, by which the Representatives had established duties upon vellum, parchment, and paper for two years. It yielded towards defraying the charges of the government about £1,350 for the years in question.[427] Shirley issued a proclamation of its conditions, one of which is in the Boston Public Library, and has been reprinted in its _Bulletin_, 1884, p. 163. =D.= THE BOUNDS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.—During the provincial period, the external limits and internal divisions of New England were the subject of disagreement. The question as to what constituted the frontier line towards Acadia was constantly in dispute, as is explained elsewhere.[428] On the western side New York had begun by claiming jurisdiction as far as the Connecticut River. She relinquished this claim in the main, as to her bounds on Connecticut, when that colony pressed her pretensions to a line which ran a score of miles from the Hudson, and when she occupied the territory with her settlers, the final adjustment being reached in 1731.[429]