assing, the Act repealing the Stamp Act was
officially transmitted to America by General Conway,[288] then
Secretary of State for America, who accompanied them with a circular to
the several Governors, in which, while he firmly insisted upon a proper
reverence for the King's Government, endeavoured affectionately to allay
the discontents of the colonists. When the Governor of Virginia
communicated this letter to the House of Burgesses, they unanimously
voted a statue to the King, and the Assembly of Massachusetts voted a
letter of thanks to Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Grafton.

But in addition to the circular letter to the several Governors,
counselling forgetfulness and oblivion as to the disorders and
contentions of the past, General Conway wrote a separate letter to
Governor Barnard, of Massachusetts, in which he said: "Nothing will tend
more effectually to every conciliating purpose, and there is nothing,
therefore, I have in command more earnestly to require of you, than that
you should exert yourself in _recommending_ it strongly to the Assembly,
that full and ample compensation be made to those who, from the madness
of the people, have suffered for their acts in deference to the British
Legislature." This letter was but a _recommendation_, not a _command_ or
_requisition_, to the Legislature, and seems to have been intended as an
instruction to Governor Barnard alone; but he, now indulging his
personal resentments as well as haughty spirit, represented the letter
of General Conway as a _command_ and _requisition_ founded on "justice
and humanity," and that the authority from which it came ought to
preclude all doubts about complying with it, adding, "Both the business
and the time are most critical--let me entreat you to recollect
yourselves, and to consider well what you are about. Shall the private
interests, passions, or resentments of a few men deprive the whole
people of the great and manifold advantages which the favour and
indulgence of their King and his Parliament are now preparing for them?
Surely after _his Majesty's commands_ are known, the very persons who
have created the prejudices and prepossessions I now endeavour to combat
will be the first to remove them."

The opposition to the Stamp Act, which the Governor interpreted as
"prejudices and prepossessions which he now endeavoured to combat," had
been justified by the King and Parliament themselves in rejecting it;
and he thus continued to make enem