Ten years later, when the Colonies had been freed from the necessity of sacrificing men and money to support the British authority against French, Spanish, and Indian antagonists, the poverty of the British treasury drove George Grenville, then Prime Minister, to a system of revenue from America, through the imposition of duties upon Colonial imports. In 1755 followed the famous Stamp Act. Its passage by Parliament was resisted by statesmen of clear foresight, with sound convictions of the injustice of taxing their brethren in America who had no representatives in either House of Parliament; but in vain, and this explosive bomb was hurled across the sea. Franklin, then in London, thus wrote to Charles Thompson, who afterwards became secretary of the Colonial Congress: “The sun of Liberty has set. The American people must light the torch of industry and economy.” To this Thompson replied: “Be assured that we shall light torches of quite another sort.” The explosion of this missile, charged with death to every noble incentive to true loyalty to the mother country, dropped its inflammatory contents everywhere along the American coast. The Assembly of Virginia was first to meet, and its youngest member, Patrick Henry, in spite of shouts of “Treason,” pressed appropriate legislation to enactment. Massachusetts, unadvised of the action of Virginia, with equal spontaneity, took formal action, inviting the Colonies to send delegates to a Congress in New York, there to consider the grave issues that confronted the immediate future. South Carolina was the first to respond. When Governor Tryon, of North Carolina, afterwards the famous Governor of New York, asked Colonel (afterwards General) Ashe, Speaker of the North Carolina Assembly, what the House would do with the Stamp Act, he replied, “We will resist its execution to the death.” On the seventh of October the Congress assembled and solemnly asserted, as had a former convention, that “their own representatives alone had the right to tax them,” and “their own juries to try them.” Throughout the coast line of towns and cities, interrupted business, muffled and tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and every possible sign of stern indignation and deep distress, indicated the resisting force which was gathering volume to hurl a responsive missile into the very council chamber of King George himself. “Sons of Liberty” organized in force, but secretly; arming themselves for the contingency of open conflict. Merchants refused to import British goods. Societies of the learned professions and of all grades of citizenship agreed to dispense with all luxuries of English production or import. Under the powerful and magnetic sway of Pitt and Burke, this Act was repealed in 1766; but even this repeal was accompanied by a “Declaratory Act,” which reserved for the Crown “the _right_ to bind the Colonies, in all cases whatsoever.”