visions as shall be
found necessary may be made to prevent for the future a conduct of so
extraordinary and unconstitutional a nature."[303]

If it was unwise for Lord Hillsborough to write letters to the Governors
of the several colonies to induce their Assemblies to treat with silent
contempt the circular letter of the Massachusetts Assembly, it was
absurd for him to order that Assembly to rescind its resolution to send
a letter which had been sent, and acted upon, and answered--a resolution
and letter, indeed, of a preceding House of Assembly. But the new House
of Assembly, after long deliberation and discussion, refused, by a
majority of 92 to 17, to rescind the obnoxious resolution of the late
House of Assembly, and at the same time prepared and addressed to Lord
Hillsborough an elaborate letter in vindication of their proceedings.
The House was, of course, forthwith _dissolved_.

Lord Hillsborough's letter produced discontent not only in
Massachusetts, but in all the American provinces. It, in effect, denied
the right of consultation and petition to the colonists; for, as was
said by Dr. Franklin, "a demand attended with a penalty of dissolution
seemed a command, not a requisition, leaving no deliberative or
discretionary power in the Assembly; and the ground of its being a
petition to the King, guarded with a most explicit declaration of the
supreme legislative power of Parliament, it wore the severe and dreadful
appearance of a penal prohibition against petitioning. It was, in
effect, saying you shall not even presume to complain, and reducing them
below the common state of slavery, in which, if men complain with
decency, they are heard unless their masters happen to be monsters. It
warmed moderation into zeal, and inflamed zeal into rage. Yet still
there appeared a disposition to express their grievances in humble
petitions. All the Assemblies on the continent, in answer to a
requisition of similar import to that already mentioned, asserted the
right of the subject to petition for redress of grievances. They joined
in petitions stating the imposition of taxes upon them without their
consent, and the abolition of juries in revenue cases, as intolerable
grievances, from which they prayed relief."[304]

It is singular and proper to observe that the Massachusetts Assembly
were now complaining, and justly complaining, of the denial of their
right of petition, and of being taxed without their own consent, when
mor