It passed the House on the 27th; on the
8th of March it was approved by the Lords without protest, amendment,
debate, or division; and two weeks later, the King being then
temporarily out of his mind, the bill received the royal assent by
commission.

At a later day, when the fatal effects of the Act were but too apparent,
it was made a charge against the ministers that they had persisted in
passing the measure in the face of strong opposition. But it was not so.
"As to the fact of a strenuous opposition to the Stamp Act," said Burke,
in his famous speech on American taxation, "I sat as a stranger in your
gallery when it was under consideration. Far from anything inflammatory,
I never heard a more languid debate in this house.... In fact, the
affair passed with so very, very little noise, that in town they
scarcely knew the nature of what you were doing." So far as men
concerned themselves with the doings of Parliament, the colonial
measures of Grenville were greatly applauded; and that not alone by
men who were ignorant of America. Thomas Pownall, once Governor of
Massachusetts, well acquainted with the colonies and no bad friend
of their liberties, published in April, 1764, a pamphlet on the
"Administration of the Colonies" which he dedicated to George Grenville,
"the great minister," who he desired might live to see the "power,
prosperity, and honor that must be given to his country, by so great
and important an event as the interweaving the administration of the
colonies into the British administration."

CHAPTER III. The Rights Of A Nation

British subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a
wilderness, extending the domain, and increasing the wealth,
commerce, and power of the mother country, at the hazard of
their lives and fortunes, ought not, and in fact do not
thereby lose their native rights.--Benjamin Franklin.

It was the misfortune of Grenville that this "interweaving," as Pownall
described it, should have been undertaken at a most inopportune time,
when the very conditions which made Englishmen conscious of the burden
of empire were giving to Americans a new and highly stimulating sense
of power and independence. The marvelous growth of the colonies in
population and wealth, much commented upon by all observers and asserted
by ministers as one principal reason why Americans should pay taxes,
was indeed well worth some consideration. A million and a half of people
spre