In the following March the political sky, already full of the portents of a coming storm, gathered a deeper blackness when the fact became known that the House of Commons in London had refused to receive the representative of the New York Assembly. In spite of prophetic warnings and wise cautions in Parliament, the determination to make merchandise of the colonies stupefied and debauched the conscience of the average lord and commoner of commercial England, as the opium question in China stupefies and debauches it yet. The government was as much determined on a war with the American colonies, and for much the same purpose, as so many of Great Britain’s later wars have been waged,—for the sake of maintaining trade. Of the twenty-five or thirty wars, even during Victoria’s reign, the majority have been for the purpose of forcing trade and making money. In a word, the war of King George and his Parliament in 1775 against the colonies was a shopkeeper’s war for a market. “British interests” then, as now, meant trade and profits. Johnson felt the injustice of the British Government’s acts when he wrote in 1769: “Whatever reason or justice there may be in the late steps, there is a probability of their being carried farther than a good man can wish.” Nevertheless, Sir William was wisely non-committal on the burning question. The Sons of Liberty in New York became active and turbulent, and made the lives of ultra-loyalists, like Colden, a burden. The royal troops had been by his orders summoned to New York City, after he had been driven to take refuge in the fort on the outbreak of violence when the stamps arrived from England. These soldiers were now the targets of scorn, especially after the Assembly had refused indemnity to Colden, who kept on recommending them to supplicate the paternal tenderness of their gracious sovereign George. After concurring in the spirited resolutions of the Legislatures of Virginia and South Carolina, the Assembly had also defeated a cunning scheme to win from them a vote of money to support the king’s military forces. The hatred between the soldiers and the Sons of Liberty burst into flame at the battle of Golden Hill, Jan. 18, 1770, in New York City, when the first blood of the American Revolution was spilled. The Sons of Liberty had erected an emblem of their freedom and hereditary rights. The liberty-pole, and their meetings with speeches under it, were survivals of the old custom of their Teutonic ancestors, who met in the folk moot under the chosen oak-trees in the forests of Germany before Christendom began. The liberty-pole with its spars was obnoxious to the redcoats, who with saw and gunpowder tried to destroy it. The citizens resisted, but the unarmed and unorganized mob broke before the charge of armed men with bayonets. Having finally succeeded in sawing the pole into kindling-wood, the military piled the fragments before the doors of the tavern where the Sons of Liberty met.