e individuals
were then represented as all America."

Lord North's amendment to reject the petition was adopted by a majority
of 186 to 67.[357]

"After having been foiled in the House of Commons," says the royal
historian, "it now remained to be decided whether that colony's
representations would meet with a more gracious reception in the House
of Lords. But here the difficulty was still greater than in the other
House. The dignity of the peerage was said to be insulted by the
appellation under which it had been presumed to usher those
representations into that Assembly. They were styled a Memorial; such a
title was only allowable in transactions between princes and states
independent of each other, but was insufferable on the part of subjects.
The answer was that the lowest officer in the service had a right to
present a memorial, even to his Majesty, should he think himself
aggrieved; with much more reason might a respectable body present one to
the House of Lords. But, exclusive of the general reason that entitled
so important a colony to lay such a paper before them, the particular
reason of its fidelity, in spite of so many examples of defection, was
alone a motive which ought to supersede all forms, and engage their most
serious attention to what it had to propose.

"After sundry arguments of the same nature, the question was determined
against hearing the Memorial by forty-five peers to twenty-five.

"When the rejection of these applications was announced to the public, a
great part of the nation expressed the highest discontent. They now
looked forward with dejection and sorrow at the prospect of mutual
destruction that lay before them, and utterly gave up all other
expectations."[358]

It might be supposed that such a rejection of the petition of the most
loyal colony in America would end the presentation of petitions on the
part of the colonies to the King and Parliament, and decide them at once
either to submit to the extinction of their constitutional rights as
British subjects, or defend them by force. But though they had, both
separately and unitedly, declared from the beginning that they would
defend their rights at all hazards, they persisted in exhausting every
possible means to persuade the King and Parliament to desist from such a
system of oppression, and to restore to them those rights which they
enjoyed for more than a century--down to the close of the French war in
1763.

FOOTNOTES: