He was a man of plain Boston ancestry, whose father had interested himself in public affairs, and who, like his son, was of doubtful business ability. Sam Adams's interests were evident from his boyhood, and when in 1743 he took his degree of Master of Arts at Harvard, he presented a thesis on the subject: "Whether it be Lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." Although he inherited a little property from his father, and although from the year 1753 he served constantly in public offices, up to the year 1764 he had scarcely been a success. His patrimony had largely disappeared; further, as tax-collector he stood, with his associates, indebted to the town for nearly ten thousand pounds. The reason for this is not clear; the fact has been used to his disadvantage by Tory historians, the first of them being Hutchinson, who calls the situation a "defalcation." But in order to feel sure that the state of affairs was justified by circumstances, we need only to consider that in the same year Adams was chosen by the town on the committee to "instruct" its representatives, and a year later was himself made a legislator. From that time on, his influence in Boston and Massachusetts politics steadily grew. His political sentiments were never in doubt. In his "instructions" of 1764 are found the words: "If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representative where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?"[19] Throughout the Stamp Act agitation he was active in opposing the new measures. He was found to be ready with his tongue, but especially so with his pen. For this reason he was constantly employed by the town and the Assembly to draft their resolutions, and some of the most momentous documents of the period remain to us in his handwriting. When at last, at the beginning of 1768, some one was needed to express the opinion of Massachusetts upon the Townshend Acts, Samuel Adams was naturally looked to as the man for the work.