districts in which they did not live or own property, or because
nearly every profession and "interest", be it merchant, farmer, west
Indian planter, physicians, soldier, clergy, and even a few Americans
sat in parliament. The Inquiry was a hard-hitting defense of
"direct representation". Interlaced with citations to the ancient
charters of Virginia were terms of fury--"detestable Thought",
"Ungenerous Insinuation", "despicable Opinion", "slavery",
"oppression", terms which suggest the level to which rhetoric had risen
even for as rational a man as the moderate burgess from Prince George
County, now grown "tough as whitleather" with "something of the look of
musty old Parchments which he handleth and studieth much". The
Inquiry was widely read in Virginia and England and its
statement on "direct representation" became the standard American
defense against "virtual representation" and any half-way measure which
would have given the colonies a few seats in parliament in the manner
of Scotland or Wales.

Still the conservative Bland, who said things in a most radical way,
was among those most happy to read Governor Fauquier's proclamation of
June 9, 1766 announcing Repeal.[24]

[24] For the full text of Bland's Inquiry, see Van Schreeven and
Scribner, Revolutionary America, I, 27-44.

British Politics and the Townshend Act, 1766-1770.

The fluid British political situation shifted again in July 1767. The
conciliatory Rockingham ministry, having brought off the Stamp Act
repeal and modification of the Sugar Act of 1764, could not sustain
itself in office. Members of both commons and lords had fought doggedly
against repeal and accepted defeat only after considerable patronage
pressures from the ministry. These ministry opponents were determined
to reassert, on the first opportunity, parliament's authority over the
colonies, believing to delay such a confrontation was a sign of
weakness. Within the Rockingham ministry personality conflicts
developed which eventually brought the ministry to a standstill.

George III correctly perceived that his government faced an emergency.
In this crisis he turned to Pitt to lead a new ministry. In one way the
king and Pitt were alike. They were "probably the only men in the
eighteenth century to believe absolutely in (their) own slogans about
patriotism, purity, and a better system of conducting government."[25]
On the other hand they differed as to what these terms mea