[Footnote 191: Minot.]

The idea of raising revenue in America, was so highly favoured in
England, especially by the landed interest, that not even the
influence of administration could have obtained a repeal of the stamp
act, on the naked principle of right. Few were hardy enough to
question the supremacy of parliament; and the act receding from the
practical assertion of the power to tax the colonists, deeply wounded
the pride of the King, and of the nation.

The temper discovered in some of the colonies was ill calculated to
assuage the wound, which this measure had inflicted, on the haughty
spirit of the country; and is supposed to have contributed to the
revival of a system, which had been reluctantly abandoned.

Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, said boastingly in the
house of commons, "that he knew how to draw a revenue from the
colonies without giving them offence."[192] Mr. Grenville eagerly
caught at the declaration, and urged this minister to pledge himself
to bring forward the measure, at which he had hinted. During the
sickness and absence of lord Chatham, the cabinet had decided on
introducing a bill for imposing certain duties on tea, glass, paper,
and painter's colours, imported into the colonies from Great Britain;
and appropriating the money in the first instance, to the salaries of
the officers of government. This bill was brought into parliament, and
passed almost without opposition.

[Footnote 192: Belsham.]

The friends of America, in England, had distinguished between internal
and external taxation; and the same distinction had been made in the
colonies. But the discussions originating in the stamp act, while they
diffused among the colonists a knowledge of their political rights,
had inspired also more accurate ideas respecting them.

These duties were plainly intended, not to regulate commerce, but to
raise revenue, which would be as certainly collected from the
colonists, as the duties on stamps could have been. The principle of
the two measures was the same. Many of the Americans were too
intelligent to be misguided by the distinction between internal and
external taxation, or by the precedents quoted in support of the
right, for which parliament contended. This measure was considered as
establishing a precedent of taxation for the mere purpose of revenue,
which might afterwards be extended at the discretion of parliament;
and was spoken of as the _entering w