f the
army, placed New York, where the head-quarters were established, in the
dilemma of submitting immediately and unconditionally to the authority
of Parliament, or taking the lead in a new career of resistance. The
rescript was in theory worse than the Stamp Act. For how could one
legislative body command what another legislative body should enact? And
viewed as a tax it was unjust, for it threw all the burden of the colony
where the troops chanced to be collected. The requisition of the
General, made through the Governor, 'agreeably to the Act of
Parliament,' was therefore declared to be unprecedented in its character
and unreasonable in its amount; yet in the exercise of the right of free
deliberation, everything asked for was voted, except such articles as
were not provided in Europe for British troops which were in
barracks."[290]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 287: In the House of Lords, Lord Mansfield, replying to Lord
Camden, said: "The noble lord who quoted so much law, and denied the
right of the Parliament of Great Britain to levy _internal_ taxes upon
the colonies, allowed at the same time that _restrictions upon trade and
duties upon the ports were legal_. But I cannot see any real difference
in this distinction; for I hold it to be true, that a tax laid in any
place is like a pebble falling into and making a circle in a lake, till
one circle produces and gives motion to another, and the whole
circumference is agitated from the centre. A tax on tobacco, either in
the ports of Virginia or London, is a duty laid upon the inland
Plantations of Virginia, a hundred miles from the sea, wherever the
tobacco grows." (Quoted in Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol.
V., p. 411.)

Mr. Grenville argued in the same strain in the House of Commons; and the
Americans, as apt pupils, soon learned by such arguments to resist
_external_ as they had successfully resisted _internal_ taxes.]

[Footnote 288: General Conway, as leader of the House of Commons, moved
the resolution for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and also moved the
resolution for the Declaratory Bill. Colonel Barre moved an amendment to
strike out from the resolution the words "in all cases whatsoever." He
was seconded by Pitt, and sustained by Beckford. "Only three men, or
rather Pitt alone, 'debated strenuously the rights of America' against
more than as many hundred; and yet the House of Commons, half-conscious
of the fatality of its decision, was so aw