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Europe.”
    Hopkins’s arguments helped move the roiling debate in America toward issues larger than any single tax or law. The issue, as Hopkins and others were making clear, was liberty.
    After limited debate in Parliament, the Stamp Act passed the House of Commons on February 27, 1765, and the House of Lords on March 8. Unlike past taxes, the Stamp Act did not concern itself with trade regulation. It was designed to raise revenue, specifically, to help pay for British troops stationed in America that cost the treasury three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. Military tribunals called Admiralty Courts were given jurisdiction over those accused of violating the new law.
    Reaction throughout the colonies was swift and certain. In Rhode Island, the public’s outrage inspired a small insurrection in Newport in late August. The colony’s legislators asserted publicly that Parliament had no right to impose such a tax on the colonies.
    Despite the protests and violence, the Stamp Act remained on schedule, due to take effect on November 1. A load of stamped paper arrived in Newport Harbor a few weeks before the deadline, inspiring a new round of denunciations. A special supplement to the
Newport Mercury
of October 28 reported the imminent death of “North American Liberty.” A few of Liberty’s friends “went a few Days ago to wait upon the poor old Gentleman, and found him indeed gasping his last, and now find him reduced to a Skelton,” wrote the newspaper’s correspondent,identified only as “A Mourner.” The Mourner invited the people of Newport to a public funeral and burial for old man Liberty on the morning of November 1.
    The ceremony took place at the appointed hour, with none of the violence of previous demonstrations. A standoff followed: the stamped paper remained on board a British ship in the harbor; the stamp master, Augustus Johnston, remained in his office but incapable of action; and all eyes turned to Samuel Ward, who had succeeded Hopkins as the colony’s governor. He ordered that Rhode Island set aside Thursday, November 28, as a day of Thanksgiving. This seemingly innocuous gesture was, in fact, a work of political genius. Ward played the role of dutiful royal subject in asking “Almighty God” to bless and protect King George Ill’s “most precious life,” which was nice enough. But Ward added a few more requests for the Almighty. He prayed that “our invaluable Rights, Liberties and Privileges, civil and religious, may be precious” in God’s sight, and that “He will be pleased to frustrate every Attempt to deprive us of them.”
    Ward’s language did not go unnoticed. Other colonial radicals cheered his sly maneuver, noting that no other governor had yet asked for God’s intercession on behalf of American liberty.
    In late December, Stamp Master Johnston resigned. Governor Ward informed London of Johnston’s resignation and further asserted that the tax was “inconsistent with” Rhode Island’s “natural and just rights and privileges.” As for the act itself, Ward reported that he couldn’t enforce it because, after all, he had no stamped paper.
    It was sitting in the cargo hold of a British ship in Newport Harbor, and nobody dared unload it.
    The hated Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, but tensions between the colonies and Parliament continued, and Rhode Islanders in particular kept a wary eye out for further limitations on their liberty and their commerce. There was no shortage of them: the Townshend Acts imposed taxes on glass, lead, imported paper, and, most famously, tea, while the Declaratory Act asserted Parliament’s right to legislate for and tax the colonies. The Townshend taxes inspired throughout the colonies anagreement to stop importing British-made goods, but for some of Rhode Island’s merchants, love of commerce trumped love of liberty. They continued