a saving of thirty thousand pounds a year to the treasury, and of relieving the American fishery from the inequality of the discriminating duty, except the old subsidy, which was scarcely one per cent. This is the most liberal measure of Grenville's administration, of which the merit is not annulled by the fact that the American whale fishery was superseding the English under every discouragement. It required liberality to accept this result as inevitable, and to favor it. It was done, too, with a distinct conviction that "the American whale fishery, freed from its burden, would soon totally overpower the British." So this valuable branch of trade, which produced annually three hundred thousand pounds, and which would give employment to many shipwrights and other artificers, and to three thousand seamen, was resigned to America. The gain would, in the first instance, be the gain of New England; but the mother country, reasoned Grenville, feels herself benefited by the welfare of every particular colony, and the colonies must much more contribute interchangeably to the advantage of each other. 1764. April. It was after these preparations that, on the memorable ninth day of March, 1764, George Grenville made his first appearance in the house of commons, as chancellor of the exchequer, to unfold the budget. He did it with art and ability. He boasted that the revenue was managed with more frugality than in the preceding reign; he explained his method of funding the debt. He received great praise for having reduced the demands from Germany, which had amounted to nearly nine millions of pounds, and were settled for about thirteen hundred thousand pounds. The demands from the landgrave of Hesse exceeded seventeen hundred thousand pounds, and he was put off with a payment of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The taxes of Great Britain exceeded, by three millions of pounds, what they were in 1754, before the war; yet the present object was only to make the colonies maintain their own army. Till the last war, they had never contributed to the support of an army at all. Beside the taxes on trade, which were immediately to be enacted, Grenville gave notice in the house that it was his intention, in the next session, to bring in a bill imposing stamp duties in America; and the reasons for giving such notice were because he understood some people entertained doubts of the power of parliament to impose internal taxes in the colonies, and because he was not so wedded to a stamp act as to be unwilling to give it up for any one that might appear more eligible; or, if the colonies themselves thought any other mode would be more expedient, he should have no objections to come into it by act of parliament. The opposition were called upon to deny, if they thought it fitting, the right of the legislature to impose any tax, internal or external, on the colonies; and not a single person ventured to controvert that right. Upon a solemn question, asked in a full house, there was not one negative. "As we are stout," said Beckford, "I hope we shall be merciful;" and no one else made a reply. 1764. April. On the fourteenth of March, Charles Jenkinson, from a committee on which he had for his associates Grenville and Lord North, reported a bill modifying and perpetuating the act of 1733, with some changes to the disadvantage of the colonies; an extension of the navigation acts, making England the storehouse of Asiatic as well as of European supplies; a diminution of drawbacks on foreign articles exported to America; imposts in America, especially on wines; a revenue duty instead of a prohibitory duty on foreign molasses; an increased duty on sugar; various regulations to sustain English manufactures, as well as to enforce more diligently the acts of trade; a prohibition of all trade between America and St. Pierre and Miquelon. The bill was rapidly carried through its several stages, was slightly amended, on the fourth of April was agreed to by the lords, and on the next day was approved by the king. "These new taxes," wrote Whately, the joint secretary of the treasury, "will certainly not be sufficient to defray that share of the American expense which America ought and is able to bear. Others must be added.” The act had for the first time the title of "granting duties in the colonies and plantations of America; for the first time it was asserted, in the preamble, that it was just and necessary that a revenue should be raised there." When the agents waited upon Grenville, to know what could be done to avert the stamp act, he answered: “I have proposed the resolution in the terms that parliament has adopted, from a real regard and tenderness for the subjects in the colonies. It is highly reasonable they should contribute something towards the charge of protecting themselves, and in aid of the great expense Great Britain put herself to on their account. No tax appears to me so easy and equitable as a stamp duty: it will fall only upon property, will be collected by the fewest officers, and will be equally spread over America and the West Indies. What ought particularly to recommend it is the mode of collecting it, which does not require extraordinary powers of entering houses, or extend a sort of influence which I never wished to increase. The colonists now have it in their power, by agreeing to this tax, to establish a precedent for their being consulted before any tax is imposed on them by parliament; for their approbation of it being signified to parliament next year, when the tax comes to be imposed, will afford a forcible argument for the like proceeding in all such cases. If they think any other mode of taxation more convenient to them, and make any proposition of equal efficacy with the stamp duty, I will give it all due consideration.' But this offer was only for form's sake. To a considerate and most respectable merchant, a member of the house of commons, who was making a representation against proceeding with the stamp act, Grenville answered: "If the stamp duty is disliked, I am willing to change it for any other equally productive. If you object to the Americans being taxed by parliament, save yourself the trouble of the discussion, for I am determined on the measure." The colonists were apprised that not a single member of either house doubted of the right of parliament to impose a stamp duty or any other tax upon them; and the king, at the prorogation, gave to what he called "the wise regulations" of Grenville his "hearty approbation.' وو 1764. April. It seemed as if "the great minister," who was taking ። pains to understand the interests" of the plantations, and with "firmness and candor" entering seriously upon regulating their affairs, was about to unite them indissolubly with the mother country by one comprehensive commercial system, and by "interweaving their administration into the British administration." CHAPTER X. HOW AMERICA RECEIVED THE PLAN OF A STAMP-TAX. GRENVILLE'S ADMINISTRATION CONTINUED. APRIL-DECEMBER, 1764. 1764. April. No sooner was parliament up, than Jenkinson pressed Grenville to forward the American stamp act by seeking that further information, the want of which he had assigned as a reason for not going on with it. Meantime, the officers of France, as they made their last journey through Canada and down the valley of the Mississippi, and on every side received the expressions of passionate attachment from the many tribes of red men, cast a wistful and lingering look upon the magnificent empire which they were ceding. But Choiseul himself saw futurity better. He who would not set his name to the treaty of peace with Great Britain issued the order, in April, 1764, for the transfer of the Island of New Orleans and all Louisiana to Spain. He did it without mental reserve, foreseeing that the whole colonial system would be changed. In the same year, he sent De Pontleroy, a lieutenant in the navy of the department of Rochefort, to travel through America, under the name of Beaulieu, in the guise of an Acadian wanderer. While England was taxing America by act of parliament, France was counting its steps towards independence. The world was rising up against superstition and authority over mind; the oppression of industry was passing away, not less than the oppression of free thought. The use of reason was no longer held to be presumption, but a duty, and the very end of creation. "Every thing that I see," wrote Voltaire, in April, " is scattering the seeds of a revolu |