The days on which these measures were to go into effect were observed by the colonists as days of fasting, prayer, and humiliation. All business was laid aside, the shops were closed, the churches opened, and the church-bells tolled as on some funeral occasion; and between praying at church, and fasting at home, and brooding over their grievances, the good people were very miserable indeed. Although they suffered great inconvenience from their observance of the non-importation agreement, yet they bore it patiently and cheerfully, like men who felt that their cause was just and right. But the sudden stoppage of the immense trade that flowed from the colonial ports into those of the mother-country told dreadfully on the commerce of Great Britain; and British merchants and British manufacturers, and British people in general, soon began to suffer even more than the colonists themselves. Whereupon, a counter stream of petitions and remonstrances set in upon the king and parliament from the people at home, who declared that the country would be ruined, if these odious measures, crippling American commerce, were not speedily withdrawn. Said they, "If we cannot sell the Americans our broadcloths, our flannels, and our silks, the obstinate men of that country will stick to their jeans, and the perverse women to their linsey-woolseys, till we are undone for ever. In that one pestilent little town of Boston, our trade in silks alone is not so good by fifty thousand dollars a year as it has been heretofore: and we humbly entreat that our American brothers be allowed to trade with us and foreign nations as in days gone by; for you must see by this time with your own eyes, that we, as a nation, are growing poorer every day under this state of things, instead of richer every year as had been expected." The commissioners--that is to say, the persons who had been appointed by the British Government to bring or receive the stamp-paper, and give it circulation throughout the Colonies--were mobbed and pelted by the indignant people, whenever and wherever they made the least attempt to do their odious work. In consequence of this determined opposition, the paper never went into circulation: so it was stocked away in outhouses, and there left to mould and to be eaten by rats and mice, if their stomachs were not too dainty for such vile provender. Thus this famous piece of ingenuity, the Stamp Act, had no other effect than that of giving the civilized world a hearty laugh, and increasing the British debt just so much as the paper cost, instead of lessening it, as its inventors, in their blind confidence, had hoped.