The king, in his speech from the throne, alluded to fresh troubles in America, and denounced, in strong terms, the rebellious spirit evinced by Massachusetts. The response of ministers assured the king of their determination to maintain "the supreme authority of Great Britain over every part of the British empire." The address was adopted in the House of Lords, but met considerable opposition in the Commons, where the oppressive acts of the government toward America were severely criticised.
Early in January the consideration of American affairs was taken up in Parliament. The petition from the Boston Convention was contemptuously rejected; the Lords recommended, in an address to the king, the transmission of instructions to the Governor of Massachusetts to obtain full information of all treasons, and to transmit the offenders to England, to be tried there under a statute of the 35th of Henry VIII., which provided for the punishment of treason committed out of the kingdom. The address was opposed in the Commons by Pownall (who had been Governor of Massachusetts (a)), Burke, Barré, and a 1757 Dowdeswell. The latter denounced the measure as "unfit to remedy the disorders," and as "cruel to the Americans and injurious to England." He also censured Hillsborough for taking the responsibility, during the recess of Parliament, of ordering colonial governors to dissolve the Assemblies. Burke thundered his eloquent anathemas against the measure. "At the request of an exasperated governor," he exclaimed, "we are called upon to agree to an address advising the king to put in force against the Americans the Act of Henry VIII. And why? Because you can not trust the juries of that country! Sir, that word must convey horror to every feeling mind. If you have not a party among two millions of people, you must either change your plan of government, or renounce the colonies forever." Even Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, opposed the measure as futile and unjust. Yet the January 26, 1769 address and resolutions accompanying it were concurred in by a majority of one hundred and fifty-five against eighty-nine. **
On the 8th of February Mr. Rose Fuller moved to recommit the address, for he saw in the proposed rigor toward the Americans the portents of great evil to the nation. He alluded to the miserable attempts to collect a revenue in America, and the monstrous evils growing out of them. "As for money," he said, "all that sum might be collected in Lon-
* The Duke of Grafton was the nobleman to whom the celebrated "Junius" addressed eleven of his scorching letters. In these he is represented as a most unscrupulous libertine in morals. He succeeded his grandfather in the family honors in 1757. He died on the 11th of March, 1811, aged seventy-five years.
** Cavendish's Debates.
Lord North.—Colonel Barré's Warnings.—General Gage in Boston.—No Co operation—Dissolution of Assemblies.—Bernard
don at less than half the expense." * Pownall, after alluding to the early settlement of America, the privations of the people, their virtues and courage, perseverance and enterprise, remarked, "But now that spirit, equally strong and equally inflamed, has but a slight and trifling sacrifice to make; the Americans have not a country to leave, but a country to defend; and have not friends and relatives to leave and forsake, but friends and relatives to unite with and stand by in one common union." But all efforts to avert the evil were vain; Mr. Fuller's motion was negatived by a majority of one hundred and sixty-nine against sixty-five.
