North endeavoured to show that this resolution arose
out of the following passage in the address:--"And whenever any of the
colonies shall make a proper application to us, we shall be ready to
afford them every just and reasonable indulgence." The terms of the
resolution, he said, being such as in the hour of victory would be good
and just, would afford a test as to the pretensions of the Americans. If
their ostensible causes of opposition were real, he conceived that they
must agree with such proposals, and that, if they did not agree with
them, then it would be proved that they had other views and were
actuated by other motives than those which they professed. He
added:--"To offer terms of peace is wise and humane; if the colonists
reject them, their blood must be on their own heads." Burke, in his
Annual Register, says, that the court party, who always loved a strong
government in whatever hands it might be lodged, and accordingly had
upon principle ever opposed any relaxation in favour of the colonies,
heard these proposals with horror, and considered themselves abandoned
and betrayed. Be that as it may, it is certain that opposition to the
minister's motion commenced on the treasury benches. The party, called
"the King's Friends," at the head of whom were Mr. Welbore Ellis and
Mr. Rigby, contended that Lord North's propositions were in direct
opposition to every principle and idea of the address; that the
scheme was at variance with all the preceding acts and declarations of
parliament, and designed to pay court to the opposition; and that they
went to acknowledge that there was, in reality, something unjust and
grievous in the idea of taxing the Americans by parliament. In fact,
they denounced the whole matter as a shameful prevarication and a mean
departure from principle, and boldly asserted that they would make no
concessions to rebels with arms in their hands, or give their consent to
any measure for a settlement with the Americans, in which an express and
definitive acknowledgment of the supremacy of the British parliament was
not a preliminary article. Mr. Ackland went so far, indeed, as to move
that the chairman should leave the chair, or, in other words, that
the committee should be dissolved and the house resumed without the
resolutions being put to the vote. Lord North had never been in such a
dilemma before, and it seems probable that he would have yielded to the
storm he had unconsciously raised, had not