atters should
be treated of at these meetings except the electing of public officers
and the business expressed in the Governor's permission; jurymen, who
had been elected before by the freeholders and inhabitants of the
several towns, were to be all summoned and returned by the sheriffs of
the respective counties; the whole executive government was taken out
of the hands of the people, and the nomination of all important officers
invested in the King or his Governor.

"In the apprehension that in the execution of these Acts riots would
take place, and that trials or murders committed in suppressing them
would be partially decided by the colonists, it was provided by another
Act, that if any persons were indicted for murder, or any capital
offence, _committed in aiding the magistracy_, the Governor might send
the person so indicted to another county, or to Great Britain, to be
tried.

"These three Acts were passed in such quick succession as to produce the
most inflammatory effects in America, where they were considered as
forming a complete system of tyranny. 'By the first,' said the
colonists, 'the property of unoffending thousands is arbitrarily taken
away for the act of a few individuals; by the second, our chartered
liberties are annihilated; and by the third, our lives may be destroyed
with impunity.'"[326]

The passing of these three Bills through Parliament was attended in each
case with protracted and animated debates.

The first debate or discussion of American affairs took place on the 7th
of March, in proposing an address of thanks to the King for the message
and the communication of the American papers, with an assurance that the
House would not fail to exert every means in their power of effectually
providing for objects so important to the general welfare as maintaining
the due execution of the laws, and for securing the just dependence of
the colonies upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.

In moving this address to pledge Parliament to the exertion of every
means in its power, Mr. Rice said: "The question now brought to issue
is, whether the colonies are or are not the colonies of Great Britain."
Lord North said, "Nothing can be done to re-establish peace, without
additional powers from Parliament." Nugent, now Lord Clare (who had
advocated the Stamp Act, if the revenue from it should not exceed a
peppercorn, as a symbol of parliamentary power), entreated that there
might be no divided co