* Three weeks before the installation of the new cabinet Pitt received an autograph letter from the king, commanding him to arrange a new administration. Pitt spoke of his age and infirmities (he was then fifty-eight), and proposed taking to himself the office of the privy seal, which implied and necessitated his removal to the House of Lords! The king was greatly astonished, but so desperately tangled were the public affairs, and so great seemed the necessity of having the powerful Pitt among his friends, that the king was obliged to yield. The witty Lord Chesterfield, alluding to the ambition of Pitt to acquire a coronet, said. "Every body is puzzled to account for this step. Such an event was, I believe, never heard or read of, to withdraw, in the fullness of his power and in the utmost gratification of his ambition, from the House of Commons (which procured him his power, and which could alone insure it to him), and to go into that hospital of incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable, that nothing but proof positive could make me believe it; but so it is." Chesterfield called it a "fall up stairs—a fall which did Pitt so much damage that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again."
** Speech on American Taxation.
Fresh Excitement in the Colonies.—Increasing Importance of the Newspapers.—"Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer."
crown. Thus the executive and judicial officers, from whom the people were to expect good government and the righteous administration of laws, were made entirely independent of the people, and became, in fact, mere hireling creatures of the crown. This had been the object of almost every minister from the time of Charles II. *
When intelligence of these acts reached America, the excitement throughout the colonies was as great as that produced by the Stamp Act, but action was more dignified and efficient. The royal governors and their retainers, elated with the prospect of being independent of the colonial Assemblies, eagerly forwarded the schemes of the ministry, and aided greatly in fostering opposition among the people. The ministry seemed totally blind to every light of common sense, and disregarded the warnings of Lord Shelburne and others in Parliament, and the opinions of just observers in America. **
The colonists clearly perceived the intention of government to tax them in some shape, and took the broad ground asserted by Otis in his pamphlet, that "taxes on trade, if designed to raise a revenue, were just as much a violation of their rights as any other tax."
The colonial newspapers, now increased to nearly thirty in number, began to be tribunes for the people, through which leading minds communed with the masses upon subjects of common interest. They teemed with essays upon colonial rights, among the most powerful of which were the "Letters of a Farmer of Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the American liberty which existed, and the fatal consequences of a supine acquiescence in min-