Writs of Assistance Issued--Excitement in Boston--The Stamp Act--Protests Against Taxation Without Representation--Massachusetts Appoints a Committee of Correspondence--Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry--Henry's Celebrated Resolutions--His Warning to King George--Growing Agitation in the Colonies--The Stamp Act Repealed--Parliament Levies Duties on Tea and Other Imports to America--Lord North's Choice of Infamy--Measures Of Resistance in America--The Massachusetts Circular Letter--British Troops in Boston--The Boston Massacre--Burning of the "Gaspee"--North Carolina "Regulators"--The Boston Tea Party--The Boston Port Bill--The First Continental Congress--A Declaration of Rights--"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" Even before peace had been made with France the king's officers in America began to enforce the revenue laws with a rigor to which the colonists had been unaccustomed. Charles Paxton, commissioner of customs in Boston, applied to the Superior Court for authority to use writs of assistance in searching for smuggled goods. These writs were warrants for the officers to search when and where they pleased and to call upon others to assist them, instead of procuring a special search-warrant for some designated place. Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice, and afterward royalist governor and refugee, favored the application, which was earnestly opposed by the merchants and the people generally.[1] "To my dying day," exclaimed James Otis, in pleading against the measure, "I will oppose with all the power and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on one hand and of villainy on the other." Parliament had authorized the issue of the writs, however, and the custom house officers therefore had the law on their side. Writs were granted, but their enforcement was attended with so many difficulties that the customs authorities virtually gave up this attempt to encroach upon the rights of the people. The next step in provoking the colonists to revolution was the Stamp Act. The object of this enactment was to raise money for the support of British troops and the payment of salaries to certain public officers in the colonies who had depended upon the colonial treasuries for their compensation. In this there was a threefold invasion of colonial rights. Taxation without representation was contrary to a principle recognized for centuries in England, vindicated in the revolution which cost Charles I his head, and upheld in America from the very beginning of the settlements here. Again, while British troops had been welcome as allies in battling against the French and the Indians, they were not desired as garrisons to overawe the free people of the colonies, and finally the colonial officers whom it was proposed to pay from the royal treasury would become the masters instead of servants of the people--or they would be servants only of the king. The purpose of the Stamp Act obviously was to make America the vassal of Great Britain.