Then came the passage of the Stamp Act, which was to tax every paper of a commercial, legal, or social nature, and which was so unpopular that the merchants of New York directed their correspondents in England to ship no more goods to them till it should be repealed. The people very generally agreed to confine their purchases to native productions. “I will wear nothing but homespun!” exclaimed one angry citizen. “I will drink no wine,” echoed another, angry that wine must pay a new duty. “I propose,” cried a third, “that we dress in sheepskins, with the wool on.”(18) To encourage a woollen manufacture in America, it was recommended to the colonists to abstain from eating the flesh of lambs, and not a butcher durst afterwards expose lamb for sale. Its operations were ushered in at Boston by the tolling of bells; effigies of the authors and abettors were carried about the streets, and afterwards torn in pieces by the populace. At Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a funeral procession was organised, and a coffin bearing the inscription, “LIBERTY, AGED CXLV. YEARS,” was paraded, amidst the booming of minute guns, and the roll of muffled drums. An oration was made over a grave prepared for its reception, at the conclusion of which some remains of life were, it was pretended, discovered in the body, which was thereupon snatched from the grave. The inscription was altered to “LIBERTY REVIVED,” and a cheerful and hilarious procession then marched off with it. In several instances the residences of the governors, officials, and tax-collectors of States were burned to the ground, or greatly damaged. So strong was the current of popular will that the Custom House officers did not, in a large number of cases, attempt to stamp the clearances of vessels sailing. The law courts remained open, and ignored the want of stamps on legal documents, and marriages were consummated simply after putting up the banns, and not by stamped certificate. The almost total suspension of business with English shippers and merchants alarmed them greatly, and they were among the first to petition for its repeal. In Parliament, among many others, Pitt was a warm friend to the American cause. In answer to a taunting speech from Grenville, he replied: “We are told that America is obstinate—that America is almost in open rebellion. _Sir, I rejoice that America has resisted._ Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest.” The Stamp Act was repealed March 19th, 1766, and in London itself was received with so much joy, that there was a general illumination, amid the ringing of church bells; and in America it was hailed with satisfaction, although subsequent action on the part of the English Government soon obliterated all memory of the concession.