staken. The ministry valued themselves when this act passed, and when
they gave notice of the Stamp Act, that both of the duties came very
short of their ideas of American taxation. Great was the applause of
this measure here. In England we cried out for new taxes on America,
whilst they cried out that they were nearly crushed with those which
the war and their own grants had brought upon them.

Sir, it has been said in the debate, that, when the first American
revenue act (the act in 1764, imposing the port-duties) passed, the
Americans did not object to the principle. It is true they touched it
but very tenderly. It was not a direct attack. They were, it is true, as
yet novices,--as yet unaccustomed to direct attacks upon any of the
rights of Parliament. The duties were port-duties, like those they had
been accustomed to bear,--with this difference, that the title was not
the same, the preamble not the same, and the spirit altogether unlike.
But of what service is this observation to the cause of those that make
it? It is a full refutation of the pretence for their present cruelty to
America; for it shows, out of their own mouths, that our colonies were
backward to enter into the present vexatious and ruinous controversy.

There is also another circulation abroad, (spread with a malignant
intention, which I cannot attribute to those who say the same thing in
this House,) that Mr. Grenville gave the colony agents an option for
their assemblies to tax themselves, which they had refused. I find that
much stress is laid on this, as a fact. However, it happens neither to
be true nor possible. I will observe, first, that Mr. Grenville never
thought fit to make this apology for himself in the innumerable debates
that were had upon the subject. He might have proposed to the colony
agents, that they should agree in some mode of taxation as the ground of
an act of Parliament. But he never could have proposed that they should
tax themselves on requisition, which is, the assertion of the day.
Indeed, Mr. Grenville well knew that the colony agents could have no
general powers to consent to it; and they had no time to consult their
assemblies for particular powers, before he passed his first revenue
act. If you compare dates, you will find it impossible. Burdened as the
agents knew the colonies were at that time, they could not give the
least hope of such grants. His own favorite governor was of opinion that
the Americans were not