ar was at its
height, the sum voted was L19,616,000.]

[Footnote 34: The report in the "Parliamentary History," xvi., 37, says:
"This act (the Stamp Act) passed the Commons almost without debate; two
or three members spoke against it, but without force or apparent
interest, except a vehement harangue from Colonel Barre (date, March 6,
1765)."]

[Footnote 35: Lord Stanhope ("History of England," v., 131) quotes a
letter of Dr. Franklin to one of his friends in America, in which, after
deploring the impossibility of preventing the act from being passed, he
expresses a hope that "frugality and industry will go a great way toward
indemnifying us." And he complied with Mr. Grenville's request to select
a person to act as Distributor of Stamps in Pennsylvania whom he thought
likely to be generally acceptable.]

[Footnote 36: These statements and arguments of Franklin are taken from
different parts of his examination before the House of Commons, as
preserved in the "Parliamentary History," xvi., 137-160.]

[Footnote 37: In the Assembly of Virginia, one of the members--Patrick
Henry--after declaiming with bitterness against the supposed arbitrary
measures of the present reign, exclaimed, "Caesar had his Brutus,
Charles I. his Oliver Cromwell, and George III.--" A cry of "Treason!"
was uttered. The Speaker called Mr. Henry to order, and declared he
would quit the chair unless he were supported by the House in
restraining such intemperate speeches.--Adolphus, _History of England_,
i., 188.]

[Footnote 38: On this point the law has been affirmed by a judge of high
reputation to be still what Lord Rockingham and his colleagues asserted.
In 1868, on the trial of Governor Eyre for an indictment arising out of
disturbances in Jamaica, Judge Blackburne laid it down "that, although
the general rule is that the Legislative Assembly has the sole right of
imposing taxes in the colony, yet, when the Imperial Legislature chooses
to impose taxes, according to the rule of English law they have a
_right_ to do it."]

[Footnote 39: See his speech on American taxation in April, 1774.]

[Footnote 40: The chief divisions were: in the Commons, 275 to 167; in
the Lords, 105 to 71.]

[Footnote 41: "History of England," vol. v., c. xlv., p. 218, ed. 1862.]

[Footnote 42: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. cxliii., life of Lord
Camden.]

[Footnote 43: Every political student will recollect Burke's description
of it as "a cabinet so variously in