Neither side being able to convince the other by abstract argument, England exerted her authority and passed the "Stamp Act," laying new taxes on the colonists.[25] They responded with protests, argumentative, eloquent, fiery, and defiant. They refused to trade with Great Britain, and became self-supporting. Thus the obnoxious laws, instead of bringing money to the mother country, caused her heavy losses. English merchants joined the Americans in petitioning for the repeal of the offensive acts of Parliament; and soon every tax was withdrawn except a tiny one on tea, so small that the money involved was trifling. But it was not the money, it was the principle involved, which had aroused the Americans; and their resistance continued as vigorous as against the previous really burdensome taxation. The tea which King George commanded should be sent forcibly to the colonists, they refused to receive. In Boston it was dumped into the harbor.[26] The English Parliament drew back in amazement; its members found themselves dealing, as one of them put it, with a nation of lawyers. They were wrong; they had encountered a force far more potent, a nation of freemen who had been permitted for a century and a half to rule themselves, who had reached the fullest measure of self-reliance and self-assertion. America had become earliest ripe for the Age of Revolution toward which the European middle classes, more lately left to themselves, were more slowly, but not less surely, developing. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XIV] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Defeat of the Young Pretender at Culloden_, page 117. [2] See _Cotton Manufacture Developed_, page 341. [3] See _John Law Promotes the Mississippi Scheme_, page 1. [4] See _Bursting of the South Sea Bubble_, page 22. [5] See _Voltaire Directs European Thought from Geneva_, page 144. [6] See _Bach Lays the Foundation of Modern Music_, page 31. [7] See _First Modern Novel_, page 100. [8] See _Watt Improves the Steam-engine_, page 302. [9] See _Benjamin Franklin Experiments with Electricity_, page 130. [10] See _Settlement of Georgia_, page 44. [11] See _Rise of Methodism: Preaching of the Wesleys and of Whitefield_, page 57. [12] See _Prince Eugene Vanquishes the Turks: Siege and Battle of Belgrad_, page 16. [13] See _Conquests of Nadir Shah: Capture of Delhi_, page 72. [14] _See Frederick the Great Seizes Silesia: Maria Theresa Appeals to the Hungarians_, page 108. [15] See _Seven Years' War: Battle of Torgau_, page 204. [16] _See Clive Establishes British Supremacy in India: The Black Hole of Calcutta: Battle of Plassey_, page 185. [17] See _Braddock's Defeat_, page 163. [18] See _Exile of the Acadian Neutrals_, page 181. [19] See _Conquest of Canada: Victory of Wolfe at Quebec_, page 229. [20] See _Usurpation of Catharine II in Russia_, page 250. [21] See _First Partition of Poland_, page 313. [22] See _Intellectual Revolt of Germany_, page 347.