sign that the House of Commons was no real
representative of the English people. Burke foresaw that Pitt was
drifting inevitably to a demand for a reform of the House which should
make it representative in fact as in name. The full issues of such a
reform, the changes which it would bring with it, the displacement of
political power which it would involve, Burke alone of the men of his
day understood. But he understood them only to shrink from them with
horror, and to shrink with almost as great a horror from the man who was
leading England on in the path of change.

[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.]

At this crisis then the temper of Burke squared with the temper of the
Whig party and of Rockingham; and the difference between Pitt's
tendencies and their own came to the front on the question of dealing
with the troubles in America. Pitt was not only for a repeal of the
Stamp Acts, but for an open and ungrudging acknowledgement of the claim
to a partial independence which had been made by the colonists. His
genius saw that, whatever were the legal rights of the mother country,
the time had come when the union between England and its children across
the Atlantic must rest rather on sentiment than on law. Such a view was
wholly unintelligible to the mass of the Whigs or the ministry. They
were willing, rather than heighten American discontent, to repeal the
Stamp Acts; but they looked on the supremacy of England and of the
English Parliament over all English dependencies as a principle
absolutely beyond question. From the union, therefore, which Pitt
offered Rockingham and his fellow-ministers stood aloof. They were
driven, whether they would or no, to a practical acknowledgement of the
policy which he demanded; but they resolved that the repeal of the Stamp
Acts should be accompanied by a formal repudiation of the principles of
colonial freedom which Pitt had laid down. A declaratory act was first
brought in, which asserted the supreme power of Parliament over the
Colonies "in all cases whatsoever." The declaration was intended no
doubt to reassure the followers of the ministry as well as their
opponents, for in the assertion of the omnipotence of the two Houses to
which they belonged Whig and Tory were at one. But it served also as a
public declaration of the difference which severed the Whigs from the
Great Commoner. In a full house Pitt found but two supporters in his
fierce attack upon the declaratory bill, which