Stamp Act Protest Quotes

the victims chosen by the mobs at the time of the Stamp Act were struck not simply because they supported or were presumed to support English policy. Such men as Andrew Oliver, Jared Ingersoll, and in particular Thomas Hutchinson represented a dangerous moral order. In attacking them, and others like them, the mobs not only defended political liberty in America but also virtue and morality. The mobs and no doubt popular leaders as well acted in the belief that they faced an unqualified evil. The Devil’s specter had been summoned up in the denunciation of the stamp men. Protestant concerns and mental patterns had fostered an exaggerated clarity of morality and immorality, thereby heightening the emotional receptivity to fear of unseen, utterly evil forces.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he had be- come quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing. Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the cards, Martin blurted out:- "Say, there's something I'd like to ask you." The man smiled and paid attention. "When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you call?" Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat of the ef- fort. "Why I'd say any time," the man answered. "Yes, but this is different," Martin objected. "She - I - well, you see, it's this way: maybe she won't be there. She goes to the university." "Then call again." "What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy. "I'm just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she is. You don't think I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he de- manded abruptly. "No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested. "Your request is not ex- actly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be only too pleased to as- sist you." Martin looked at him admiringly. "If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said. "I beg pardon?" "I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest." "Oh," said the other, with comprehension. "What is the best time to call? The afternoon? - not too close to meal-time? Or the evening? Or Sunday?" "I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face. "You call her up on the telephone and find out." "I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away. He turned back and asked:- "When you're speakin' to a young lady - say, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith - do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?" "Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith' always - until you come to know her better." So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem. "Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return the borrowed books.

If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary); he acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle. … Obedience to a person, institution or power (heteronomous obedience) is submission; it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of a foreign will or judgment in place of my own. Obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation. My conviction and my judgment, if authentically mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself; (p. 6) In order to disobey, one must have the courage to be alone, to err and to sin. ... …; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth. (p. 8) At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization. (p. 10) It is the function of the prophet to show reality, to show alternatives and to protest; it is his function to call loudly, to awake man from his customary half-slumber. It is the historical situation which makes prophets, not the wish of some men to be prophets. (p. 12) Disobedience, then, in the sense in which we use it here, is an act of the affirmation of reason and will. It is not primarily an attitude directed against something, but for something: for man’s capacity to see, to say what he sees, and to refuse to say what he does not see (p. 17) That which was the greatest criticism of socialism fifty years ago—that it would lead to uniformity, bureaucratization, centralization, and a soulless materialism—is a reality of today’s capitalism. (p. 31) Man, instead of being the master of the machines he has built, has become their servant. But man is not made to be a thing, and with all the satisfactions of consumption, the life forces in man cannot be held in abeyance continuously. We have only one choice, and that is mastering the machine again, making production into a means and not an end, using it for the unfolding of man—or else the suppressed life energies will manifest themselves in chaotic and destructive forms. Man will want to destroy life rather than die of boredom. (p. 32) The supreme loyalty of man must be to the human race and to the moral principles of humanism. (p. 38) The individual must be protected from fear and the need to submit to anyone’s coercion. (p. 42) Not only in the sphere of political decisions, but with regard to all decisions and arrangements, the grip of the bureaucracy must be broken in order to restore freedom. (p. 42) According to its basic principles, the aim of socialism is the abolition of national sovereignty, the abolition of any kind of armed forces, and the establishment of a commonwealth of nations. (p. 43) It is exactly the weakness of contemporary society that it offers no ideals, that it demands no faith, that it has no vision—except that of more of the same. (p. 49) Socialism must be radical. To be radical is to go to the roots; and the root is Man. (p. 49)

A corrupt and dynastic political party is antithetical to the rule of law and to carefully crafted constitutional checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. A tendency towards autocracy and consequent institutional subversion is inevitable with a party thus configured. The result is a prime minister bereft of real power, subservient to the dynastic head and a mute spectator to the loot and plunder of the nation’s resources; a president who is a loyal camp follower and will faithfully rubber stamp the decisions ordained by the dynasty: witness how unhesitatingly President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the Proclamation of Emergency at Mrs. Gandhi’s bidding in 1975 and ponder whether Mrs. Pratibha Patil, (besieged as she was by her co-operative sugar factory in liquidation, her co-operative bank bankrupt, and her family embroiled in the murder case of a popular intra-party rival in Jalgaon at the time of her nomination by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi), would have done otherwise; or for that matter whether President Pranab Mukherjee, whose many acts of subversion of the Constitution during the Emergency have been documented by the Shah Commission, is so radically transformed that he would now protect it; a judiciary accused of judicial overreach when it censures the government or brings its ministers to book while its inconvenient judgments are subjected to review or Presidential Reference; a CAG whose findings against the government’s decisions are vilified as being patently erroneous, in excess of jurisdiction and even motivated, although that august body, the Constituent Assembly had opined that as the guardian of the nation’s finances, the CAG was as important a Constitutional functionary as the justices of the Supreme Court; a CVC appointed despite the taint of corruption and over the protest of the leader of the Opposition, whose appointment was finally quashed by the Supreme Court; and a CBI whose only role on empirical evidence is to falsely implicate political opponents and wrongly exonerate the regime’s members and cronies.

It took the Stamp Act crisis to make this leadership aware of its dilemma. A political group in Boston called the Loyal Nine—merchants, distillers, shipowners, and master craftsmen who opposed the Stamp Act—organized a procession in August 1765 to protest it. They put fifty master craftsmen at the head, but needed to mobilize shipworkers from the North End and mechanics and apprentices from the South End. Two or three thousand were in the procession (Negroes were excluded). They marched to the home of the stampmaster and burned his effigy. But after the “gentlemen” who organized the demonstration left, the crowd went further and destroyed some of the stampmaster’s property. These were, as one of the Loyal Nine said, “amazingly inflamed people.” The Loyal Nine seemed taken aback by the direct assault on the wealthy furnishings of the stampmaster. The rich set up armed patrols. Now a town meeting was called and the same leaders who had planned the demonstration denounced the violence and disavowed the actions of the crowd.

The Stamp Act of 1765 which taxed every piece of printed paper or document was the catalyst that set the stage for serious colonial protest and the formation of the Sons of Liberty.