"for defraying the future charges of protecting, defending, and securing the colonies." This Act received the royal assent on the 5th of April, 1764. Mr. Grenville had not, however, exhausted his budget; another arrow remained in his quiver to be aimed at the very heart of American prosperity. He brought forward in the House of Commons fifty-five resolutions, one of which (of the 10th of March) was to the following purport: "That towards further defraying the expenses of protecting and securing the colonies, it may be proper to charge certain stamp duties in the colonies." But he did not propose to carry this project into execution till the following year.

These resolutions appear not to have excited much attention. The House was thin, the opposition languid. But the Minister had "sown the dragon's teeth, which were to come up in armed men.'

These measures accomplished or proposed, Mr. George Grenville did not omit to extol his own great feats in the royal speech at the prorogation of Parliament.

"The wise regulations," thus ran the speech, "which have been established to augment the public resources, to unite the interests of the most distant possessions of my Crown, and to encourage and secure their commerce with Great Britain, call for my hearty approbation."* King and Parliament were satisfied with their work. In America the temper was very different. The vexations of the British cruisers were sensibly felt by trade, the threatened stamp duties were protested against by the New England States, and petitions were sent to England, praying they might not be imposed. Notwithstanding these signs of repugnance, the plan was carried on to completion.

"Parliamentary History."

In February, 1765, fifty resolutions were adopted in the Committee of Ways and Means; a Bill founded on these resolutions was carried after a short debate. In the only division which took place in the House of Commons, the minority were only forty, and in the House of Lords there was neither division nor debate.

Far different was the temper in which this measure was received on the other side of the Atlantic.

In America the Stamp Act produced the greatest excitement. It was reprinted, with a death's-head prefixed instead of the royal arms, and a name was given to it not inappropriate: "England's folly and America's bane." At Boston the flags of the shipping were hoisted half-mast high, the church bells were muffled and tolled a funeral knell. More deliberate resistance followed: proceedings in the courts of justice were suspended, that stamps might not be required; merchants refused to pay debts incurred for English importations; associations were formed for the exclusive use of colonial manufactures; the collectors sent over to distribute the stamps were maltreated, and resigned in a panic. Finally, public offices and private houses were pillaged by a disorderly mob.

These riots took place in August, 1765. When the intelligence reached England, a new Ministry was in power. Lord Rockingham was at the head of that Ministry; General Conway was their leader in the House of Commons, and Mr. Burke, although then little known, was the private secretary and confidential adviser of the head of the Government.

The situation was perilous and perplexing. It was impossible to pass unnoticed the flagrant disobedience of America. It was folly to persist in executing an unjust and unwise law.

Parliament met on the 14th of January, 1766. On the address to the Crown occurred that famous debate on the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies, which, in fact, decided the question.

Amid breathless silence Mr. Pitt rose to address the House of Commons. After speaking of the large proportion of property held by the Commons of England, compared with the Crown, the Lords, and the Church, he concluded his argument by saying: "When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own; but in an American tax, what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons of Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty—what? Our own property? No! We give and grant to your Majesty the property of your Majesty's Commons of America. It is an 'absurdity in terms."

Mr. Grenville made a laboured reply, and quoted the precedents of Chester and of Durham.

Mr. Pitt rose again. There was some doubt whether he was in order; but, as only part of the address had been read, and the desire of the House to hear him was great, he was allowed to proceed.

He

"The

He treated Mr. Grenville with scorn and sarcasm. proclaimed aloud his sympathy with America : gentleman tells us America is obstinate-America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted! Three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest. I come not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of Parliament, with the statute-books doubled down in dogsears, to defend the cause of liberty; if I had, I myself would have cited the two cases of Chester and of Durham."

He concluded with this advice: "Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is precisely my opinion. It is that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, totally, and immediately. That the reason for the repeal be assigned, that it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and made to extend to every kind of legislation whatsoever. That we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, except only that of taking their money from their pockets without their own consent."

Unhappily, the opponents of the policy of Mr. Grenville regarding America were divided. Mr. Pitt maintained that the British Parliament had no right whatever to impose taxes on the colonies. But he asserted loudly an unlimited power to fetter their trade, and declared, on behalf of the manufacturers, that he would not allow the Americans to make a horseshoe nail in their own country.

On the other hand, Lord Rockingham and Mr. Burke, while they condemned the policy of the Stamp Act, maintained the right of Parliament to legislate for America even in cases of taxation. When required to define this right, Mr. Burke alluded to the extreme case of the necessities of the mother country, when all ordinary rules must yield to the safety of the empire. But Mr. Burke held liberal doctrines respecting trade, and was quite willing to relax restrictions which impeded the commerce of the colonies with foreign countries. Mr. Pitt would not listen to these notions, subversive, as he thought, of colonial dependency.

These differences amongst wise and good men were sub

sequently the cause of much evil. Lord Rockingham, as we have seen, was first Lord of the Treasury, and was at the head of affairs when the account of the disturbances at Boston reached England. After long deliberation, he determined to propose to Parliament the total repeal of the Stamp Act, and at the same time a declaratory bill, asserting the right of Great Britain to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever. An attempt of the King to undermine the Minister by private intrigue was defeated by the firmness of Lord Rockingham; and both these measures received the sanction of Parliament. In examining the positions taken by Mr. Pitt and Lord Rockingham, neither of them appears impregnable, though either might be tenable for a time. If Mr. Pitt had prevailed, questions of manufactures and trade must soon have arisen; upon which the Americans would as little bear to be fettered as upon taxation itself. Indeed, it was the fear of being crippled in their foreign trade and domestic manufacture, by the jealousy and monopoly of the mother country, which induced the Americans, when the quarrel once began, to refuse terms of accommodation apparently liberal. Nor could it be supposed that the infant giant would allow himself to be strangled in his cradle by the coils and folds of commercial restriction.

On the other hand, although the supreme right to govern, to bind, and even to tax America, might be abstractedly true, there seemed little wisdom in asserting a power, of which nothing but the last necessity could justify the exercise. It would have been better, probably, to have been silent on the powers asserted by the Declaratory Act, and to have left an extreme case for the time when an extreme case should arise. Mr. Fox, however, probably spoke the truth when