nd, by every
obligation of morality, systematically to refrain. In the same manner
ought the British legislature to refrain from taxing the American
colonies. The Stamp Act was indefensible, not because it was beyond the
constitutional competence of Parliament, but because it was unjust and
impolitic, sterile of revenue, and fertile of discontents. These sound
doctrines were adopted by Lord Rockingham and his colleagues, and were,
during a long course of years, inculcated by Burke, in orations, some of
which will last as long as the English language.

The winter came; the Parliament met; and the state of the colonies
instantly became the subject of fierce contention. Pitt, whose health
had been somewhat restored by the waters of Bath, reappeared in the
House of Commons, and, with ardent and pathetic eloquence, not only
condemned the Stamp Act, but applauded the resistance of Massachusetts
and Virginia, and vehemently maintained, in defiance, we must say, of
all reason and of all authority, that, according to the British
constitution, the supreme legislative power does not include the power
to tax. The language of Grenville, on the other hand, was such as
Strafford might have used at the council table of Charles the First,
when news came of the resistance to the liturgy at Edinburgh. The
colonists were traitors; those who excused them were little better.
Frigates, mortars, bayonets, sabres, were the proper remedies for such
distempers.

The ministers occupied an intermediate position; they proposed to
declare that the legislative authority of the British Parliament over
the whole Empire was in all cases supreme; and they proposed, at the
same time, to repeal the Stamp Act. To the former measure Pitt objected;
but it was carried with scarcely a dissentient voice. The repeal of the
Stamp Act Pitt strongly supported; but against the government was
arrayed a formidable assemblage of opponents. Grenville and the Bedfords
were furious. Temple, who had now allied himself closely with his
brother, and separated himself from Pitt, was no despicable enemy. This,
however, was not the worst. The ministry was without its natural
strength. It had to struggle, not only against its avowed enemies, but
against the insidious hostility of the King, and of a set of persons
who, about this time, began to be designated as the King's friends.

The character of this faction has been drawn by Burke with even more
than his usual force and viva