more than ever that the ministers counterfeited as well as prostituted the sentiments of the king, whose unwritten word they would not trust, and whose written word convicted them of falsehood. 1766. Feb. On the same day, Bedford and Grenville went to an interview with Bute, for whom it was a proud moment to find his aid solicited by his bitterest personal enemies. He desired that the past might be buried in oblivion, and that all honest men might unite; but he refused to enter upon any conference on the subject of a new administration. The Duke of York interposed his offices, and bore to the king the Duke of Bedford's "readiness to receive the royal commands, should his majesty be inclined to pursue the modification instead of the total repeal of the stamp act." But the king, who was resolved not to receive Grenville again as his chief minister, disregarded the offer. Such were the auspices when, on the thirteenth, Benjamin Franklin was summoned to the bar of the house of commons. The occasion found him full of hope and courage, having among his interrogators Grenville and Charles Townshend, and the house of commons for intent listeners. Choiseul, too, was sure to learn and to weigh all that Franklin should utter. In answer to questions, Franklin declared that America could not pay the stamp-tax for want of gold and silver, and from want of post-roads and means of sending stamps back into the country; that there were in North America about three hundred thousand white men, from sixteen to sixty years of age; that the inhabitants of all the provinces. together, taken at a medium, doubled in about twenty-five years; that their demand for British manufactures increased much faster; that in 1723 the whole importation from Britain to Pennsylvania was but about fifteen thousand pounds sterling, and had already become near half a million; that the exports from the province to Britain could not exceed forty thousand pounds; that the balance was paid from remittances to England for American produce, carried to our own islands or to the French, Spaniards, Danes, and Dutch in the West Indies, or to other colonies in North America, or to different parts of Europe, as Spain, Portugal, and Italy; that these remittances were greatly interrupted by new regulations, and by the English men-ofwar and cutters stationed all along the coast in America; that the last war was really a British war, commenced for the defence of a purely British trade and of territories of the crown, and yet the colonies contributed to its expenses beyond their proportion, the house of commons itself being the judge; that they were now imposing on themselves many and very heavy taxes, in part to discharge the debts and mortgages on all their taxes and estates then contracted; that if, among them all, Maryland, a single province, had not contributed its proportion, it was the fault of its government alone; that they had never refused, and were always willing and ready to do what could reasonably be expected from them; that, before 1763, they were of the best temper in the world towards Great Britain, and were governed at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper; they allowed the authority of parliament in laws, except such as should lay internal duties, and never disputed it in laying duties to regulate commerce; and considered that body as the great bulwark and security of their liberties and privileges; but that now their temper was much altered, and their respect for it lessened; and, if the act is not repealed, the consequence would be a total loss of the respect and affection they bore to this country, and of all the commerce that depended on that respect and affection. 1766. Feb. "Do you think it right," asked Grenville, " that America should be protected by this country, and pay no part of the expense?" "That is not the case," answered Franklin; "the colonies raised, clothed, and paid during the last war twenty-five thousand men, and spent many millions." "Were you not reimbursed by parliament?" rejoined Grenville. "Only what, in your opinion," answered Franklin, "we had advanced beyond our proportion; and it was a very small part of what we spent. Pennsylvania, in particular, disbursed about five hundred thousand pounds; and the reimbursements, in the whole, did not exceed sixty thousand pounds." 66 1766. Feb. "Do you think the people of America would submit to pay the stamp duty if it was moderated?" "No, never. They will never submit to it." And when the subject was brought up a second and a third time, and one of Grenville's ministry asked, "May not a military force carry the stamp act into execution?" Franklin answered: "Suppose a military force sent into America; they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion: they may, indeed, make one." "How would the Americans receive a future tax, imposed on the same principle with that of the stamp act?" "Just as they do this; they would not pay it," was the answer. "What will be the opinion of the Americans on the resolutions of this house and the house of lords, asserting the right of parliament to tax the people there?" They will think the resolutions unconstitutional and unjust." "How would they receive an internal regulation, connected with a tax?" "It would be objected to. When aids to the crown are wanted, they are, according to the old established usage, to be asked of the assemblies, who will, as they always have done, grant them freely. They think it extremely hard that a body in which they have no representatives should make a merit of giving and granting what is not its own, but theirs; and deprive them of a right which is the security of all their other rights." "Is not the post-office, which they have long received, a tax as well as a regulation?" interposed Grenville to Franklin, the deputy post-master for America; and Charles Townshend repeated the question. "No," replied Franklin, "the money paid for the postage of letters is merely a remuneration for a service done." "But if the legislature should think fit to ascertain its right to lay taxes, by any act laying a small tax contrary to their opinion, would they submit to pay the tax?" "An internal tax, how small soever, laid by the legislature here on the people there, will never be submitted to. They will oppose it to the last." "The people," he made answer to the same question under many forms, "will pay no internal tax by parliament." 1766. Feb. "Is there any kind of difference," continued Grenville's ministry, "between external and internal taxes to the colony on which they may be laid?" "The people," argued Franklin, "may refuse commodities, of which the duty makes a part of the price; but an internal tax is forced from them without their consent. The stamp act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts, nor marry, nor make our wills, unless we pay such and such sums; and thus it is intended to extort our money from us, or ruin us by the consequences of refusing to pay it." "But suppose the external duty to be laid on the necessaries of life?" continued Grenville's ministry. And Franklin amazed them by his true answer: "I do not know a single article imported into the northern colonies but what they can either do without or make themselves. The people will spin and work for themselves, in their own houses. In three years, there may be wool and manufact ures enough." "Does the distinction between internal and external taxes exist in the charter of Pennsylvania?" asked a friend of Grenville. "No," said Franklin, "I believe not." "Then," asked Charles Townshend, may they not, by the same interpretation of their common rights as Englishmen, as declared by Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, object to the parliament's right of external taxation?" And Franklin answered instantly: "They never have hitherto. Many arguments have been lately used here to show them that there is no difference; and that, if you have no right to tax them internally, you have none to tax them externally, or make any other law to bind them. At present, they do not reason so; but, in time, they may be convinced by these arguments." On the twentieth, while the newspapers of New York were that very morning reiterating the resolves of the Sons of Liberty, that they would venture their lives and fortunes to prevent the stamp act from taking place, that the safety 1766. Feb. of the colonies depended on a firm union of the whole, the ministers, at a private meeting of their supporters, settled the resolutions of repeal which even Charles Townshend was present to accept, and which, as Burke believed, he intended to support by a speech. Early the next day, every seat in the house of commons had been taken; between four and five hundred members attended. Pitt was ill, but his zeal was above disease. "I must get up to the house as I can," said he; "when in my place, I feel I am tolerably able to remain through the debate, and cry ay to the repeal with no sickly voice;" and, through the huzzas of the lobby, he hobbled into the house on crutches, swathed in flannels. Conway moved for leave to bring in a bill for the repeal of the American stamp act. It had interrupted British commerce; jeoparded debts to British merchants; stopped one third of the manufactures of Manchester; increased the rates on land, by throwing thousands of poor out of employment. The act, too, breathed oppression. It annihilated juries, and gave vast power to the admiralty courts. The lawyers might decide in favor of the right to tax; but the conflict would ruin both countries. In three thousand miles of territory, the English had but five thousand troops, the Americans one hundred and fifty thousand fighting men. If they did not repeal the act, France and Spain would declare war, and protect the Americans. The colonies, too, would set up manufactories of their own. the whole for so trifling an object? Why, then, risk Jenkinson, on the other side, moved a modification of the act; insisting that the total repeal, demanded as it was with menaces of resistance, would be the overthrow of British authority in America. In reply to Jenkinson, Edmund Burke spoke in a manner unusual in the house; connecting his argument with a new kind of political philosophy. About eleven, Pitt rose. He conciliated the wavering by allowing good ground for their apprehensions, and, acknowledging his own perplexity in making an option between two ineligible alternatives, he pronounced for repeal, as due to the liberty of unrepresented subjects, and in gratitude |