Thanks to his education at Harvard College, maltster Samuel Adams had impressive intellectual and literary skills. In this private letter to an English friend, Adams undertakes, in reasoned prose, to refute the arguments used by British ministers to defend the new measures of imperial taxation and control.

SAMUEL ADAMS

To John Smith
December 19, 1765

Your acquaintance with this country … makes you an able advocate on her behalf, at a time when her friends have everything to fear for her. … The [British] nation, it seems, groaning under the pressure of a very heavy debt, has thought it reasonable & just that the colonies should bear a part; and over & above the tribute which they have been continually pouring into her lap, in the course of their trade, she now demands an internal tax. The colonists complain that this is both burdensome & unconstitutional. They allege, that while the nation has been contracting this debt solely for her own interest, they have [been] subduing & settling an uncultivated wilderness, & thereby increasing her power & wealth at their own expense. …

But it is said that this tax is to discharge the colonies’ proportion of expense in carrying on the [recent] war in America, which was for their defense. To this it is said, that it does by no means appear that the war in America was carried on solely for the defense of the colonies; … there was evidently a view of making conquests, [thereby] … advancing her [Britain’s] dominion & glory. …

There are other things which perhaps were not considered when the nation determined this to be a proportionate tax upon the colonies. … The [British] nation constantly regulates their trade, & lays it under what restrictions she pleases. The duties upon the goods imported from her & consumed here … amount to a very great sum. …

There is another consideration which makes the Stamp Act obnoxious to the people here, & that is, that it totally annihilates, as they apprehend, their essential rights as Englishmen. The first settlers … solemnly recognized their allegiance to their sovereign in England, & the Crown graciously acknowledged them, granted them charter privileges, & declared them & their heirs forever entitled to all the liberties & immunities of free & natural born subjects of the realm. …

The question then is, what the rights of free subjects of Britain are? … It is sufficient for the present purpose to say, that the main pillars of the British Constitution are the right of representation & trial by juries, both of which the Colonists lose by this act. Their property may be tried … in a court of Admiralty, where there is no jury. [As for representation], if the colonists are free subjects of Britain, which no one denies, it should seem that the Parliament cannot tax them consistent with the Constitution, because they are not represented.

SOURCE : Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1904), 202–203.