Equally the friend of America was the English democracy--politically far less powerful during the century after the Restoration than in the preceding and the subsequent periods. When the hated Stamp Act was repealed, the “Common People” of London lit bonfires and illuminated the streets, rang the historic Bow Bells, and decked the shipping in the Thames with flags. But the House of Commons, before whom came the critical measures of legislation for the colonies, reflected the feeling of the aristocracy and not that of the populace. “The majority,” said a member, during a debate on American affairs in 1770, “is no better than an ignorant multitude.” Sir George Saville, a man of rare independence and integrity, replied in strong words. “The greatest evil that can befall this nation,” he declared, “is the invasion of the people’s rights by the authority of this house. I do not say that the members have sold the rights of their constituents; but I do say, I have said, and I shall always say, that they have betrayed them.” But his protest was shouted down as treason, and Parliament blindly pursued its course of usurpation. Long before that time, there had been in America thoughts of independence as a refuge from usurpation. The colonists cherished a genuine loyalty to the old flag, and a strong pride in the Saxon blood, whose latest and, indeed, most typical product they themselves were. Yet, as far back as 1638, when Charles I. tried to revoke the original patent of Massachusetts, the settlers threatened to “confederate themselves under a new government for their necessary safety and subsistence.” In 1698, Governor Nicholson, of Virginia, reported that “a great many in the plantations think that no law of England ought to be in force and binding upon them without their own consent.” Three years later, a public document noted that “the independence the colonies thirst after is now notorious.” The sentiment grew gradually during the reigns of the Georges, slowly overcoming the strength of the old attachment to the mother country. Every encroachment attempted by royalty or officialism aroused a hostility that reinforced the spirit of liberty. For instance, when Samuel Shute, Governor of Massachusetts in 1719, tried to prevent the publication of the Assembly’s answer to one of his speeches, claiming power over the press as his prerogative, he only succeeded in evoking a vigorous resistance, that finally disposed of his pretension, and gave the press untrammeled freedom. And thus it was that a generation later the patriotic Otis, of Boston, the man “who dared to love his country and be poor,” spoke so boldly in reply to Hutchinson, who summed up his aristocratic preferences in the odious Horatian maxim, _Odi profanum vulgus_, and who avowed his dissatisfaction that “liberty and property should be enjoyed by the vulgar.”