Accordingly, the news of this fresh attempt at taxation was met by a unanimous determination to resist it.

Newspaper writers and pamphleteers denounced not only the duties but the ministry which imposed them.

Petitions from almost every State were sent over to England, addressed to the King and to the Parliament; but the violent temper of the leaders of the populace was not content to wait for answers to them.

Associations were at once formed in Boston and one or two other cities, where resolutions were adopted in the spirit of retaliation (as their framers avowed), to desist from the importation of any articles of British commerce, and to rely for the future on American manufactures.

The principal Custom-house officers at Boston were badly beaten, and others were compelled to seek refuge in a man-of-war which happened to be in the harbor.
It would be painful, and at the present day useless, to trace the steps by which these local disturbances gradually grew into one general insurrection.