Meanwhile the summer had witnessed riots in many places, and one of these was extremely disgraceful. Chief-justice Hutchinson had tried to dissuade the ministry from passing the Stamp Act, but an impression had got abroad among the wharves and waterside taverns of Boston that he had not only favoured it but had gone out of his way to send information to London, naming certain merchants as smugglers. Under the influence of this mistaken notion, on the night of the 26th of August a drunken mob plundered Hutchinson's house in Boston and destroyed his library, which was probably the finest in America at that time. Here, as is apt to be the case, the mob selected the wrong victim. Its shameful act was denounced by the people of Massachusetts, and the chief-justice was indemnified by the legislature. In the other instances the riots were of an innocent sort. Stamp officers were forced to resign. Boxes of stamped paper arriving by ship were burned or thrown into the sea, and at length the governor of New York was compelled by a mob to surrender all the stamps entrusted to his care. These things were done for the most part under the direction of societies of workingmen known as "Sons of Liberty," who were pledged to resist the execution of the Stamp Act. At the same time associations of merchants declared that they would buy no more goods from England until the act should be repealed, and lawyers entered into agreements not to treat any document as invalidated by the absence of the required stamp. As for the editors, they published their newspapers decorated with a grinning skull and cross-bones instead of the stamp. [Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.] These demonstrations produced their effect in England. In July, 1765, the Grenville ministry fell, and the new government, with Lord Rockingham at its head, was more inclined to pay heed to the wishes and views of the Americans. The debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act lasted nearly three months and was one of the fiercest that had been heard in Parliament for many a day. William Pitt declared that he rejoiced in the resistance of the Americans, and urged that the act should be repealed because Parliament ought never to have passed it; but there were very few who took this view. As the result of the long debate, at the end of March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, and a Declaratory Act was passed in which Parliament said in effect that it had a right to make such laws for the Americans if it chose to do so. The people of London, as well as the Americans, hailed with delight the repeal of the Stamp Act; but the real trouble had now only begun. The resolutions of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry and their approval by the Congress at New York had thrown the question of American taxation into the whirlpool of British politics, and there it was to stay until it worked a change for the better in England as well as in America. [Sidenote: How the question was affected by British politics.]