he sight
of the bridegroom, and yet could not help sometimes bursting into a fit
of laughter at his oddity and ugliness. Anne bore her awkward position
with a sort of stolid composure which was almost dignity. To add to
the other unsatisfactory conditions of the marriage, the prophets of
evil began to point to the ominous conjuncture of names--an English
princess married to a Prince of Orange. When this happened last, what
followed? The expulsion of the father-in-law by the son-in-law. Go
to, then!

[Sidenote: 1736--Massachusetts Bay retaliates]

On the same day on which the House of Commons voted the grant of the
princess's dowry, a memorial from the council and representatives of
the colony or province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, was
presented and read from the table. The memorial set forth that the
province was placed under conditions of difficulty and distress owing
to a royal instruction given to the governor of the province
restraining the emission of its bills of credit and restricting the
disposal of its public money. The memorial, which seems to have been
couched in the most proper and becoming language, prayed that the House
would allow the agent for the province to be heard at the bar, and that
the House, if satisfied of the justice of the request, would use its
influence with the King in order that he might be graciously pleased to
withdraw {43} the instructions as contrary to the rights of the charter
of Massachusetts Bay, and tending in their nature to distress if not to
ruin the province. The House of Commons treated this petition with the
most sovereign contempt. After a very short discussion, if it could
even be called a discussion, the House passed a resolution declaring
the complaint "frivolous and groundless, a high insult upon his
Majesty's Government, and tending to shake off the dependency of the
said colony upon this kingdom, to which by law and right they are and
ought to be subject." The petition was therefore rejected. To the
short summary of this piece of business contained in the parliamentary
debates the comment is quietly added, "We shall leave to future ages to
make remarks upon this resolution, but it seems not much to encourage
complaints to Parliament from any of our colonies in the West Indies."
Not many ages, not many years even, had to pass before emphatic comment
on such a mode of dealing with the complaints of the American colonies
was made by the American c