against the New York legislature, which had refused to obey an order
concerning the quartering of troops. By way of punishment, Townshend now
suspended the legislature. A few weeks after carrying these measures
Townshend died of a fever, and his place was taken by Lord North, eldest
son of the Earl of Guilford. North was thirty-five years of age. He was
amiable and witty, and an excellent debater, but without force of will.
He let the king rule him, and was at the same time able to show a strong
hand in the House of Commons, so that the king soon came to regard him
as a real treasure. Soon after North's appointment, Lord Chatham and
other friends of America in the cabinet resigned their places and were
succeeded by friends of the king. From 1768 to 1782 George III. was to
all intents and purposes his own prime minister, and contrived to keep a
majority in Parliament. During those fourteen years the American
question was uppermost, and his policy was at all hazards to force the
colonists to abandon their position that taxation must go hand in hand
with representation.

[Sidenote: What the Townshend acts really meant.]

This purpose was already apparent in Charles Townshend's acts. They were
not at all like previous acts imposing port duties to which the
Americans had submitted. British historians sometimes speak of the
American Revolution as an affair which grew out of a mere dispute about
money; and even among Americans, in ordinary conversation and sometimes
in current literature, the unwillingness of our forefathers to pay a tax
of threepence a pound on tea is mentioned without due reference to the
attendant circumstances which made them refuse to pay such a tax. We
cannot hope to understand the fierce wrath by which they were animated
unless we bear in mind not only the simple fact of the tax, but also the
spirit in which it was levied and the purpose for which the revenue was
to be used. The Molasses Act threatening the ruin of New England
commerce was still on the statute-book, and commissioners, armed with
odious search-warrants for enforcing this and other tyrannical laws,
were on their way to America. For more than half a century the people
had jealously guarded against the abuse of power by the royal governors
by making them dependent upon the legislatures for their salaries. Now
they were all at once to be made independent, so that they might even
dismiss the legislatures, and if need be call for troops