decided in favour of intolerance; and their fault was aggravated by the
consideration that the experiment had been tried, and that they
themselves were the living witnesses of its folly." (Marsden's History
of the Early Puritans, p. 311.)]

[Footnote 278: It was but just to have added that the trade between
England and America was as profitable to America as it was to England,
and that the value of property and rents advanced more rapidly in
America than in England.]

[Footnote 279: This is a withering rebuke to a conceited though clever
young statesman, Lord Nugent, who, in a previous part of the debate,
insisted that the honour and dignity of the kingdom obligated them to
compel the execution of the Stamp Act, "unless the right was
acknowledged and the repeal solicited as a favour," concluding with the
remark that "a peppercorn, in acknowledgment of the right, is of more
value than millions without."]

[Footnote 280: Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap.
xxi.]

[Footnote 281: History of the United States, Vol. V., Chap. xxi., pp.
397, 398.]

[Footnote 282: Prior Documents, pp. 64-81.]

CHAPTER XI.

AUTHORITY OF PARLIAMENT OVER THE BRITISH COLONIES.

Before proceeding with a summary statement of events which followed the
repeal of the Stamp Act, I think it proper to state the nature and
extent of the authority of Parliament over the colonies, as interpreted
by legislative bodies and statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr.
Bancroft well remarks:

"It is the glory of England that the rightfulness of the Stamp Act was
in England itself a subject of dispute. It could have been so nowhere
else. The King of France taxed the French colonies as a matter of
course; the King of Spain collected a revenue by his own will in Mexico
and Peru, in Cuba and Porto Rico, and wherever he ruled. The
States-General of the Netherlands had no constitutional doubt about
imposing duties on their outlying colonies. To England exclusively
belongs the honour that between her and her colonies the question of
right could arise; it is still more to her glory, as well as to her
happiness and freedom, that in that contest her success was not
possible. Her principles, her traditions, her liberty, her constitution,
all forbade that arbitrary rule should become her characteristic. The
shaft aimed at her new colonial policy was tipped with a feather from
her own wing."[283]

In the dispute which took place in