Lord Strange then proposed to postpone the Report, that, since repeal was intended, the House might rescind its resolution on the right of taxing, which would be inconsistent with giving it up. This the majority would not allow; and Dyson, on the modifying plan, hinting that internal taxes might be laid to ascertain the right, Lord Palmerston said, that modifying would be giving up the right and retaining the oppression. The Report being then made, Oswald moved to recommit it. Hussey showed the badness of the Act, which all allowed, (even Grenville having offered to correct it,) and declared the most advisable method was a requisition to the Provinces to raise money for the service of the Government. Norton broke out on the resistance of the Colonies, and said, that to resist a known law was High Treason. Huske, a wild, absurd man, very conversant with America, had still sense enough to show that the Americans could not be independent, for they would be obliged to lay an internal tax for the support of their own paper-currency, and could not impose that tax without the consent of Parliament. T. Townshend referred to a letter of Governor Bernard (a great favourite of Grenville, and warm for the sovereignty of England) in which he had advised to get rid of the Stamp Act. At eleven at night the recommitment was rejected by 240 to 133; and the Bill for Repeal was ordered to be brought in.

Dr. Blackstone then moved an instruction to the committee for bringing in the bill, that all votes of the Assemblies should be expunged that were repugnant to the rights of the Legislature of Great Britain. Mr. Yorke said, that an Act declaratory of the right would be a virtual expunging of their votes. This George Grenville treated with much contempt, and as a mere evasion; and let loose all his acrimony against the Ministers for reversing his Stamp Act. Conway said he was surprised at so much fondness for a bill which the late Ministers had so much neglected while they had power to enforce it. He had been looking for the orders they had given, and could find but one, and that from the Treasury, settling how much poundage should be deducted from the profits of the Stamp-duty. This had been their only order till the 12th of July, when they had determined to send a military force. (This was at the conclusion of their power.) Grenville replied, orders had been given, for Stamp-officers had been appointed. At near two in the morning Dr. Blackstone’s motion was rejected without a division.

The Bill of Repeal was but faintly opposed in its course, the Opposition reserving their fire for the third reading. Wedderburne and Dyson, however, moved to annex a clause declaratory of the law, and enacting that in case any person or persons should print, or cause to be printed, any paper calling the said law in question, or abuse it in any manner whatsoever, should be guilty of a præmunire. The Ministers objected; and Rose Fuller, with severe invectives on the Tories, said such a motion would have been well-timed in the reigns of Henry VIII. or Charles II. Wedderburne replied by showing he had taken the words of his motion from the Act of Settlement. The motion was rejected.

March 4th was fixed for passing the declaratory Bill of Right, and the Repeal. Mr. Pitt objected again to the first, and avowed his opinion that the Parliament had no right of taxing North America while unrepresented. “He had heard,” he said, “that this opinion had been treated in his absence as nonsense, as the child of ignorance, as the language of a foreigner who knew nothing of the Constitution. Yet the common law was his guide; it was civil law that was the foreigner.” To this he added severe reflections on Dr. Hay, the person he alluded to, for having adopted arbitrary notions from the civil law. “For himself, he was sorry to have been treated as an overheated enthusiastic leveller, yet he had served the highest and best Prince in Christendom, and the most valiant and brave nation, and never would change his opinions till the day of his death. If he was one of the weakest men in the kingdom, at least he was one of the soberest;[248] had no animosities, no pursuits; he wished to live and die a dutiful subject, and to see such an Administration as the King should like, and the people approve. Wales had never been taxed till represented; nor did he contend for more than had been given up to Ireland in the reign of King William.” He quoted one or two authors; said he was a solitary, unconversing man, and not a very reading man neither; but he loved old books and old friends; and though his books and his opinions might be nonsensical, he should still adhere to them; and declared he never gave his dissent with more dislike to a question than he now gave it at present.” Dr. Hay excused himself, and pleaded having been misrepresented; and then he and Rigby argued for the repeal, if it must pass, without the declaratory law. Mr. Pitt moved to leave out the words in all cases whatsoever; and the debate turned chiefly on the resemblance or non-resemblance of Ireland to America, in the privileges enjoyed by the former. The amendment was rejected, and the bill passed.[249]

The Bill for Repeal was then read for the last time, and eagerly and obstinately combated by Grenville and his party. Bamber Gascoyne produced a letter written to Liverpool, by Sir William Meredith, in which the latter had said to the Mayor, “Lord Bute’s friends, Mr. Grenville’s party and the rank Tories, voted for this bloody question; and considering we had been beaten twice in the House of Lords, we were surprised to find our numbers were 275 to 167; I hope soon to send you word of the repeal. P. S.—Mr. Pitt will soon be at the head of affairs.”

Pitt rose and said, He had heard somewhere, no matter where—a bird in the air had told him—of a meeting that had lately been held (between Bute, Bedford, and Grenville) of which he could not learn the particulars; but had heard that at that meeting the noble Lord (Bute) behaved like himself and like a nobleman. It was a name which had been much bandied about in a way it did not deserve. “I am inflexibly bent,” continued he, “to resist his return to power; but how could that prophet (Sir W. Meredith) imagine a thing so improbable as that I should be at the head, when I am so extremely at the tail of affairs, as I am now, with five friends in the other House, and four in this? In the order and class of salutary and preventive things, I never felt greater satisfaction than in giving my vote for this repeal. You could not subsist and be a people with that defalcation of imports. America is over-glutted with nothing but the Stamp Act. Nothing but a disposition to heal and strengthen the Government can make you a people. I have my doubts if there would have been a Minister to be found who would have dared to have dipped the royal ermines in the blood of the Americans. This country, like a fine horse, to use a beautiful expression of Job, whose neck is clothed in thunder, if you soothe and stroke it, you may do anything; but if an unskilful rider takes it in hand, he will find that, though not vicious, yet it has tricks. I repeat it, I never had greater satisfaction than in the repeal of this Act.”

This speech gave great offence to Grenville, who replied, “Let his bird have told him what it would, yet, in justice to the noble Lord (Bute), he would declare that it was impossible to behave better than he had done; but why was that meeting mentioned? to what end? He had heard a bird speak, too, of a meeting, or meetings, on other occasions. But the gentleman had doubted whether a Minister would have been found to dip the royal ermines in blood;—no, sir, not dip the royal ermines in blood; but I am one who declare, if the tax was to be laid again, I would do it; and I would do it now if I had to choose; since he has exerted all his eloquence so dangerously against it, it becomes doubly necessary. It is necessary from the increase of the debt in the late war; he knows I was against the enormous expense of the German war. Are all those boasted triumphs shrunk to the meanness of supporting such a measure as this? I envy not the popularity; let him have the bonfire; I rejoice in the hiss. Was it to do again, I would do it.”

Pitt desired to say one word in answer. “What that bird, alluded to two years ago, did say, I will tell gentlemen. The noble Lord (Bute) came to my lodging on a message from the King—I suppose because I was lame—not to converse with a hermit, but about coming into the King’s service. The noble Lord behaved with great fairness. I had an interview; was dismissed with the same marks of favour by the King. Some time ago I had another meeting with a royal person (Duke of Cumberland), who is no more. I objected to the brother of the noble Lord being Minister for Scotland; had no objection to his having a sinecure. I was again dismissed with the same graciousness by the King. But I am charged with the expense of the German war. If the honourable gentleman had such strong objections to that war, why did he not resign his post of Treasurer of the Navy?” Grenville had nothing to reply; and in fact it ill became him to plead disapprobation of measures in which he had concurred, rather than resign so very lucrative an employment.

The repeal passed by 250 to 122. It made its way even through the House of Lords by a majority of more than thirty, but was followed by a strenuous protest drawn up by Lord Lyttelton. Lord Camden took the same part as Mr. Pitt, and declared against the right of taxing. He also detected Lord Mansfield, who had quoted two laws that had never existed. As I am possessed of no notes relative to the debates in that House, I do not pretend to extend the detail of them. The most remarkable event was Lord Bute’s speaking: he censured the timidity of the repeal, wished to see firm and able Ministers, and denied enjoying any present influence, and protested against accepting any future power.

The victorious Ministers having thus secured a majority on the most difficult point, determined to make use of it to alleviate other aggrieved subjects, and to extend their own popularity. The tax on Cider had given great uneasiness to the Western counties, particularly from its being collected by the mode of excise. The City of London had adopted those disgusts; and Lord Bute, under whose Administration the tax had been laid, had sunk beneath the panic after he had carried the measure. To alter that mode of collection was the next step taken by the Ministers; and they found it no difficult task to obtain the assent of so time-serving a Parliament, who by turns enacted and repealed whatever was proposed to them, and who supported every successive Minister of that period, and deserted him the moment he lost his power. I do not know that other Parliaments have not, or would not have been as bad; but no Parliament ever had so many opportunities of being impudent. The Opposition not well pleased with Lord Bute’s ineffectual support, and angry that he did no more than encourage them to oppose, were little anxious to save the honour of his Cider Act, and the repeal of the excise passed easily.