Pennsylvania Chronicle Hall) against the Stamp Act, and other excessive tax laws passed without colonial representation in the British Parliament. In 1773 the paper gained much notoriety when it featured an article chronicling the unfolding of the Boston Tea Party and voicing popular support for this rebellious and historic event. While Benjamin Franklin was in London as agent for Pennsylvania he opposed the enactment of the Stamp Act in 1765. Although he knew passage of the bill was inevitable he went along with the measure while actually working for its repeal. The people of Pennsylvania however suspected Franklin of duplicity. To offset
No taxation without representation illegally, the colonists responded by forming militias and seized political control of each colony, ousting the royal governors – with the exception of the American-born Royal Governor of Connecticut, John Trumbull, who was allowed to remain as the new Patriot Governor. The complaint was never officially over the amount of taxation (the taxes were quite low, though ubiquitous), but always on the political decision-making process by which taxes were decided in London, i.e. without representation for the colonists in British Parliament. Patrick Henry's resolution in the Virginia legislature implied that Americans possessed all the rights of Englishmen, that the principle