It chanced that at this moment George III and George Grenville fell out. The king dismissed the minister, and gave the Marquis of Rockingham the headship of a new set of ministers. Now Rockingham and his friends needed aid from somebody to give them the strength to outvote Grenville and the Tories. So when the question of what should be done about the Stamp Act came up, they listened most attentively to what Mr. Pitt had to say. That great man said that the Stamp Act should be repealed wholly and at once. At the same time another law should be passed declaring that Parliament had power to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever. The Rockinghams at once did as Mr. Pitt suggested. The Stamp Act was repealed. The Declaratory Act was passed. In the colonies Pitt was praised as a deliverer. Statues of him were placed in the streets, pictures of him were hung in public halls. But, in reality, the passage of the Declaratory Act was the beginning of more trouble.

The Rockingham ministers did what Mr. Pitt advised them to do. He then turned them out and made a ministry of his own. He was now Earl of Chatham, and his ministry was the Chatham Ministry. The most active of the Chatham ministers was Charles Townshend. He had the management of the finances and found them very hard to manage. So he hit upon a scheme of laying duties on wine, oil, glass, lead, painter's colors, and tea imported into the colonies. Mr. Pitt had said that Parliament could regulate colonial trade. The best way to regulate trade was to tax it. At the same time that Townshend brought in this bill, he brought in others to reorganize the colonial customs service and make it possible to collect the duties. He even provided that offences against the revenue laws should be tried by judges appointed directly by the king, without being submitted to a jury of any kind.

Many years before this, Parliament had made a law taxing all sugar brought into the continental colonies, except sugar that had been made in the British West Indies. Had this law been carried out, the trade of Massachusetts and other New England colonies would have been ruined. But the law was not enforced. No one tried to enforce it, except during the few months of vigor at the time of the arguments about writs of assistance. As the taxes were not collected, no one cared whether they were legal or not. Now it was plain that this tax and the Townshend duties were to be collected. The Massachusetts House of Representatives drew up a circular letter to the other colonial assemblies asking them to join in opposing the new taxes. The British government ordered the House to recall the letter. It refused and was dissolved. The other colonial assemblies were directed to take no notice of the circular letter. They replied at the first possible moment and were dissolved.