When, therefore he found the British Government making laws which made him pay roundly for sending his tobacco to market, and taxing him as if there were no Virginia Legislature to say what taxes the people could and should pay, he began to be restless and dissatisfied. England was a great way off; Virginia was close at hand. He was loyal to the King and had fought under the King's officers, but if the King cared nothing for his loyalty, and only wanted his pence, his loyalty was likely to cool. His chief resentment, however, was against Parliament. Parliament was making laws and laying taxes. But what was Parliament? It was a body of law-makers in England, just as the House of Burgesses was in Virginia. To be sure, it could pass laws about navigation which concerned all parts of the British Empire; but, somehow, it made these laws very profitable to England and very disadvantageous to Virginia. Parliament, however, had no right to pass such a law as the Stamp Act. That was making a special law for the American colonies, and taking away a right which belonged to the colonial assemblies. Washington had grown up with an intense love of law, and in this he was like other American Englishmen. In England there were very few persons who made the laws, the vast majority had nothing to do but to obey the laws. Yet it is among the makers of laws that the love of law prevails; and since in America a great many more Englishmen had to do with government in colony and in town than in England, there were more who passionately insisted upon the law being observed. An unlawful act was to them an outrage. When they said that England was oppressing them, and making them slaves, they did not mean that they wanted liberty to do what they pleased, but that they wanted to be governed by just laws, made by the men who had the right to make laws. And that right belonged to the legislatures, to which they sent representatives. So it was out of his love of law and justice that Washington and others protested against the Stamp Act; and when the act was repealed, they threw up their hats and hurrahed, not because they now should not have to buy and use stamps, but because by repealing the act, Parliament had as much as said that it was an unlawful act. However, this was an unwilling admission on the part of Parliament, which repealed the act, but said at once: "We can tax you if we choose to."