At the same time, however, the Prime Minister desired to steer a middle course, and eventually resolved to repeal the Stamp Act, but to preface the measure by a Declaratory Act, enunciating the undoubted right of Parliament to make laws binding the British in all cases. Benjamin Franklin, examined before a Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the American question, while denouncing the Stamp duty as impolitic and injurious to the colonies and expressing his belief that his countrymen would never submit to it in any form, unless compelled by arms, expressed his opinion that, while nothing would induce the Assemblies to revoke their resolutions, they would not object to an act asserting the abstract rights of Parliament to impose taxes as long as the Stamp Act was repealed. Rockingham, thus encouraged, thereupon introduced the Declaratory Act, not because he had any liking for it, but because in his opinion many people of high principles would never have been brought to repeal the Stamp Act without it.[24] "It was not the inclination of Lord Rockingham," said Charles James Fox some years later, "but the necessity of his situation, which was the cause of the Declaratory Act. The Act passed the House of Commons without a division, and, in the House of Lords, when Lord Camden insisted on a division, there were only four peers who voted with him 'non-content.'"[25]
The House of Commons had on January 21 given leave to Conway to bring in a bill to repeal the Stamp duty, and had rejected by 275 to 167 Grenville's amendment to substitute "explain and amend" for "repeal." The Bill was read for the first time on February 21 and in the long and fierce debates that ensued Grenville took an active part in defence of his measure. "It was," said Horace Walpole, "too much to give up his favourite Bill and his favourite occupation, talking, both at once." Though vigorously contested to the end, the Bill passed the lower chamber, and was on March 4 carried to the House of Lords, where, says George Onslow, it met "with not quite so civil a reception as such a bill, so carried in our House, and so conveyed as it was, by a hundred and fifty members to the other House, did, in my opinion, deserve." After two divisions, each of which resulted in a majority for ministers, the Bill passed the House of Lords and on March 18 received the Royal Assent, "an event that caused more universal joy," Burke said, "throughout the British dominions" than perhaps any other that can be remembered, and left Grenville to lament that "it was clear that both England and America were now governed by the mob."
CHAPTER XIV
THE KING versus ROCKINGHAM AND THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT
Though in his farewell interview with Grenville, in answer to a question of the departing minister as to how he had incurred his Majesty's displeasure, the King stated that his late ministers had put too much "constraint" upon him, and instead of asking or tendering advice, had expected obedience, Grenville insisted in attributing his fall to the machinations of Lord Bute—and this in spite of the fact that George assured him that Lord Bute "had no hand in advising the present change."[26]
Photo by Emery Walker. From a portrait after Sir Joshua Reynolds