During Robert Walpole's administration [1732], a stamp duty was
proposed. He said "I will leave the taxation of America to some
of my successors, who have more courage than I have."
Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania, proposed a tax in
1739. Franklin thought it just, when a delegate in the Colonial
Congress at Albany, in 1754. But when it was proposed to Pitt in
1759 the great English statesman said: "I will never burn my
fingers with the American stamp act."