How the Stamp Act was Received in America: Pitt and House

Pitt, for some time past withdrawn by sickness from public affairs, was unconnected, at this moment, with either Grenville's or Rockingham's party. He now appeared in his place in the House of Commons, and delivered his opinion "that the kingdom had no right to levy a tax on the colonies." "The Commons in America, represented in their several Assemblies, have invariably exercised the constitutional right of giving and granting their own money; they would have been slaves if they had not; at the same time, this kingdom has ever possessed the power of legislative and commercial control. The colonies acknowledge your authority in all things, with the sole exception that you shall not take their money out of their pockets without their consent."

This decisive avowal by Pitt made a profound impression on the House. After a long pause, Grenville rose to vindicate the Stamp Act. The tumults in America bordered, he averred, on open rebellion; but if the doctrines now promulgated were upheld, they would soon lose that name, and become a revolution. Taxation was a branch of the sovereign power, constantly exercised by Parliament over the unrepresented. Resorting, then, to a method of intimidation common with politicians, "the seditious spirit of the colonies," he said, "Owes its birth to the faction in this House." This invidious assault was met by Pitt with characteristic intrepidity. "A charge is brought against gentlemen sitting in this House of giving birth to sedition in America. The freedom with which they have spoken their sentiments against this unhappy act is imputed to them as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me." "We are told America is obstinate--America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." "The Americans have been wronged! They have been driven to madness by injustice! Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? No! Let this country be the first to resume its prudence and temper; I will pledge myself for the colonies, that on their part animosity and resentment will cease."

The new ministry were under no obligation to support the policy of their predecessors. Anxious to escape the difficulty by the readiest means, they brought in a bill for repealing the Stamp Act. Franklin, summoned to the bar of the House as a witness, testified that the act could never be enforced. His prompt and pointed answers gained him great credit for information, acuteness, and presence of mind. In favor of repeal, Burke, introduced into Parliament by Rockingham, to whom he had been private secretary, and for one of whose rotten boroughs he sat, gave his eloquent support. In spite of a very strenuous opposition on the part of the supporters of the late ministry, the bill of repeal was carried in the Commons by a vote of two hundred and seventy-five to one hundred and sixty-seven.

But the ministers by no means went the length of Pitt. They placed the repeal on the ground of expediency merely, and they softened the opposition by another bill previously passed, which asserted the power and right of Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever." Lord Camden, formerly Chief-Justice Pratt, made a vigorous opposition to this bill in the House of Lords. "My position in this--I repeat it; I will maintain it to the last hour--taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in the law of nature. It is more; it is itself an eternal law of nature." Lord Mansfield, on the other hand, maintained the sovereign power of Parliament as including the right to tax,--an idea quite too flattering to the pride of authority to be easily relinquished.