hing to the common cause.
I know of no better way than that now pursuing to lay such a tax. If you
can tell of a better, I will adopt it."

Franklin, who was present with the others on this occasion, ventured
to suggest that the "usual constitutional way" of obtaining colonial
support, through the King's requisition, would be better. "Can you
agree," asked Grenville, "on the proportions each colony should raise?"
No, they could not agree, as Franklin was bound to admit, knowing the
fact better than most men. And if no adequate answer was forthcoming
from Franklin, a man so ready in expedients and so practiced in the
subtleties of dialectic, it is no great wonder that Grenville thought
the agents now fully convinced by his reasoning, which after all was
only an impersonal formulation of the inexorable logic of the situation.

Proceeding thus leisurely, having taken so much pains to elicit
reasonable objection and none being forthcoming, Grenville, quite
sure of his ground, brought in from the Ways and Means Committee, in
February, 1765, the fifty-five resolutions which required that stamped
paper, printed by the government and sold by officers appointed for that
purpose, be used for nearly all legal documents, for all customs papers,
for appointments to all offices carrying a salary of 20 pounds
except military and judicial offices, for all grants of privilege and
franchises made by the colonial assemblies, for Licenses to retail
liquors, for all pamphlets, advertisements, handbills, newspapers,
almanacs, and calendars, and for the sale of packages containing playing
cards and dice. The expediency of the act was now explained to the
House, as it had been explained to the agents. That the act was legal,
which few people in fact denied, Grenville, doing everything thoroughly
and with system, proceeded to demonstrate also. The colonies claim, he
said, "the privilege of all British subjects of being taxed only with
their own consent." Well, for his part, he hoped they might always enjoy
that privilege. "May this sacred pledge of liberty," cried the minister
with unwonted eloquence, "be preserved inviolate to the utmost verge
of our dominions and to the latest pages of our history." But Americans
were clearly wrong in supposing the Stamp Act would deprive them of the
rights of Englishmen, for, upon any ground on which it could be said
that Englishmen were represented, it could be maintained, and he was
free to assert, that A