In conformity with this notice, he moved for leave to bring in, "first, A bill for removing all doubts and apprehensions concerning taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain in any of the colonies and plantations of North America.
"Second. A bill to enable his Majesty to appoint commissioners with sufficient powers to treat, consult, and agree upon the means of quieting the disorders now subsisting in certain of the colonies of North America."
The first contained a declaration that Parliament will impose no tax or duty whatever payable within any of the colonies of North America, except only such duties as it may be expedient to impose for the purposes of commerce, the net produce of which should always be paid and applied to and for the use of the colonies in which the same shall be respectively levied, in like manner as other duties collected under the authority of their respective legislatures are ordinarily paid and applied.
The second authorized the appointment of commissioners by the crown, with power to treat either with the existing governments, or with individuals, in America; provided that no stipulations which might be entered into should have any effect until approved in Parliament, other than is afterward mentioned.
It is then enacted, that the commissioners may have power "to proclaim a cessation of hostilities in any of the colonies, to suspend the operation of the non-intercourse law; and farther, to suspend, during the continuance of the act, so much of all or any of the acts of Parliament which have passed since the 10th day of February, 1763, as relates to the colonies.
"To grant pardon to any number or description of persons, and to appoint a governor in any colony in which his majesty had heretofore exercised the power of making such appointments."
These bills passed both houses of Parliament with inconsiderable opposition.
Intelligence of the treaty between the United States and France having been received by the minister about the time of their being introduced, copies of them, before they had gone through the requisite forms, were hurried to America, to be laid before congress and the public, in the hope and expectation that they might counteract the effects which it was feared the treaty with France would produce.
April.
General Washington received early information of their arrival, and entertained serious fears of their operation. He was apprehensive that the publication of a proposition for the restoration of peace on the terms originally required by America, would greatly increase the numbers of the disaffected; and immediately forwarded the bills to congress in a letter suggesting the policy of preventing their pernicious influence on the public mind by all possible means, and especially through the medium of the press.