Grenville told Franklin that he wished to do things as pleasantly as possible, and was not disposed to insist upon the Stamp Act, if the Americans could suggest anything better. But when it appeared that no alternative was offered except to fall back upon the old clumsy system of requisitions, Grenville naturally replied that there ought to be some more efficient method of raising money for the defence of the frontier. Accordingly in March, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed, with so little debate that people hardly noticed what was going on. But when the news reached America there was an outburst of wrath that was soon heard and felt in London. In May the Virginia legislature was assembled. George Washington was sitting there in his seat, and Thomas Jefferson, then a law-student, was listening eagerly from outside the door, when Patrick Henry introduced the famous resolutions in which he declared, among other things, that an attempt to vest the power of taxation in any other body than the colonial assembly was a menace to the common freedom of Englishmen, whether in Britain or in America, and that the people of Virginia were not bound to obey any law enacted in disregard of this principle. The language of the resolutions was bold enough, but a keener edge was put upon it by the defiant note which rang out from Henry in the course of the debate, when he commended the example of Tarquin and Cæsar and Charles I. to the attention of George III. "If this be treason," he exclaimed, as the speaker tried to call him to order, "if this be treason, make the most of it!" The other colonies were not slow in acting. Massachusetts called for a general congress, in order that all might discuss the situation and agree upon some course to be pursued in common. South Carolina responded most cordially, at the instance of her noble, learned, and far-sighted patriot, Christopher Gadsden. On the 7th of October, delegates from nine colonies met in a congress at New York, adopted resolutions like those of Virginia, and sent a memorial to the king, whose sovereignty over them they admitted, and a remonstrance to Parliament, whose authority to tax them they denied. The meeting of this congress was in itself a prophecy of what was to happen if the British government should persist in the course upon which it had now entered. [Sidenote: Stamp Act riots.]