oration was changed to the Fourth of July. [Sidenote: Lord North's ministry] [Sidenote: The merchants of New York] Five weeks before the Boston Massacre the Duke of Grafton had resigned, and Lord North had become prime minister of England. The colonies were kept under Hillsborough, and that great friend of arbitrary government, Lord Thurlow, as solicitor-general, became the king's chief legal adviser. George III was now, to all intents and purposes, his own prime minister, and remained so until after the overthrow at Yorktown. The colonial policy of the government soon became more vexatious than ever. The promised repeal of all the Townshend acts, except the act imposing the tea-duty, was carried through Parliament in April, and its first effect in America, as Lord North had foreseen, was to weaken the spirit of opposition, and to divide the more complaisant colonies from those that were most staunch. The policy of non-importation had pressed with special severity upon the commerce of New York, and the merchants there complained that the fire-eating planters of Virginia and farmers of Massachusetts were growing rich at the expense of their neighbours. In July, the New York merchants broke the non-importation agreement, and sent orders to England for all sorts of merchandise except tea. Such a measure, on the part of so great a seaport, virtually overthrew the non-importation policy, upon which the patriots mainly relied to force the repeal of the Tea Act. The wrath of the other colonies was intense. At the Boston town meeting the letter of the New York merchants was torn in pieces. In New Jersey, the students of Princeton College, James Madison being one of the number, assembled on the green in their black gowns and solemnly burned the letter, while the church-bells were tolled. The offending merchants were stigmatized as "Revolters," and in Charleston their conduct was vehemently denounced. "You had better send us your old liberty-pole," said Philadelphia to New York, with bitter sarcasm, "for you clearly have no further use for it." [Sidenote: Assemblies convened at strange places] [Sidenote: Taxes in Maryland] [Sidenote: The North Carolina "Regulators"]