t was rejected by a majority of two hundred and
seventy-eight against one hundred and eight, and the original question
was then carried without a division.

A similar amendment was moved in the house of lords by the Marquess of
Rockingham, and a debate equally warm ensued. Lord Gower frankly avowed
that he with his brethren in office had been misled in their conduct
with respect to American affairs. New York, he observed, had been forced
into hostile measures by the insurgents of Connecticut, and he predicted
that if the friends of government were well supported by a force from
England, the colonies would be brought to a sense of their duty without
the shedding of more blood. The Earl of Shelburne termed this prediction
rash, and advanced it as an incontrovertible fact, "that the commerce of
America was the vital stream of this empire." At the same time, while he
considered that the independence of the colonies would be the result of
the contest, he confessed that this result would be the ruin of Great
Britain. The house was next startled with the declarations made by the
Duke of Grafton, now lord privy seal. His grace boldly condemned all
the proceedings with regard to America during the last twelve months,
asserting that he had been deceived and misled upon the whole subject,
and that ministers had induced him to lend his countenance to those
measures, by withholding information and misrepresenting facts. Grafton
also declared that nothing less than a total repeal of all the American
acts which had passed since the year 1763, could now restore peace
and happiness, or prevent the most fatal consequences to this country:
consequences, he said, which he could not think of without the utmost
degree of grief and horror. He concluded by declaring that in his
present ill state of health, nothing could have induced him to have left
his house, but a conviction of his being right,--a knowledge of the
dangerous state of the country, and a sense of what he owed to it, as
well as to his conscience. The Bishop of Peterborough, who had spoken
and voted for coercive measures in previous sessions, acknowledged a
similar change in his sentiments to those of the Duke of Grafton, and
imputed his previous views to misinformation, and deception on the part
of the ministers. This defection, however, did not produce much effect
in the house. Ministers descanted powerfully on the great question at
issue,--using similar arguments to those which