s,
such as those of Boston, and even in the Assemblies of some of the
States by language scarcely short of treason,[37] seemed a concession to
intimidation scarcely compatible with the maintenance of the dignity of
the crown or the legitimate authority of Parliament. On the other hand,
to persist in the retention of a tax which the whole population affected
by it was evidently determined to resist to the uttermost, was to incur
the still greater danger of rebellion and civil war. In this dilemma,
the ministers resolved on a course calculated, as they conceived, to
avoid both evils, by combining a satisfaction of the complaints of the
Colonists with an assertion of the absolute supremacy of the British
crown and Parliament for every purpose. And on February 24, 1766, the
Secretary of State brought in a bill which, after declaring, in its
first clause, "that the King's Majesty, by and with the consent of the
Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons of Great Britain, in
Parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power
and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity
to bind the Colonists and people of America, subjects of the crown of
Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever," proceeded to repeal the Stamp
Act, giving a strong proof of the sincerity of the desire to conciliate
the Colonists by the unusual step of fixing the second reading of the
bill for the next day.

But in its different clauses it encountered a twofold opposition, which
he had, probably, not anticipated. It is unnecessary to notice that
which rested solely on the inexpediency of repealing the Stamp Act, "the
compulsory enforcement of which was required by the honor and dignity of
the kingdom." But the first clause was even more strenuously resisted,
on grounds which its opponents affirmed to rest on the fundamental
principles of the constitution. It was urged in the House of Commons by
Mr. Pitt that, "as the Colonies were not represented in Parliament,
Great Britain had no legal right nor power to lay a tax upon them--that
taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power. Taxes," said
the great orator, "are the voluntary gift and grant of the Commons
alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike
concerned; but the concurrence of the peers and the crown to a tax is
only necessary to clothe it with the form of a law; the gift and grant
is in the Commons alone.... The distinction betwe