libations were poured out for your health, success, and every other happiness. Even your old friend Hugh Roberts stayed with us till cleven o'clock, which you know was a little out of his common road, and gave us many curious anecdotes within the compass of your forty years' acquaintance."* * Cadwalader Evans to Dr. Franklin. Sparks, vii., 288. PART IV. CHAPTER I. THE STAMP ACT PASSED. It was in the evening of the tenth of December, 1764, that the agent of Pennsylvania arrived in London. The impending, the inevitable, Stamp Act, he soon found, was the absorbing topic with the colonial agents; with whom he was often in consultation during the next few weeks. By every means his ingenuity could suggest, Dr. Franklin sought to prevent the introduction of a measure, which proved, to use his own language, "the mother of mischiefs." He was powerless. The conferring agents could devise nothing, except to ask an interview with Mr. George Grenville, the head of the administration, who had pledged his word to parliament to bring in a bill for taxing the colonies. The minister consented to see them, and on the second of February, 1765, the agents, four in number, met at his office. Mr. Grenville received them with official, with Grenvillian polite ness. He was an able man of business, an honest statesman, and singularly devoted to the duties of his place. "He took public duty," remarks Mr. Burke, "not as a duty which he was to fulfill, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy." "But with no small study of detail, he did not seem to have his view carried to the total circuit or our affairs." It has been remarked of his family, even in recent generations, that they are, at once, guileless and reserved, and both in au uncommon degree. Mr. Grenville listened patiently on this occasion to the arguments of the American agents, who urged their well-worn plea, that if the colonies were to be taxed, the tax should be imposed by their own parliaments, not the parliament of Great Britain, in which they were not represented, and which knew not their ability nor their burdens. Mr. Grenville said, as he had said in substance a year before: "I take no pleasure in bringing upon myself colonial resentments. It is the duty of my office to manage the revenue. I have really been made to believe that, considering the whole circumstances of the mother country and the colonies, the latter can and ought to pay something to the common cause. I know of no better way than that now pursuing to lay such a tax. If you can tell me of a better, I will adopt it." Dr. Franklin spoke. He reminded the minister of the ancient mode of raising supplies in the colonies for the service of the king, a mode which had always proved effectual. He placed in Mr. Grenville's hands the resolution unanimously passed by the Assembly of Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1764, pledging that province to do all that it could to aid the king whenever the king should ask aid in the usual and constitutional manner. Mr. Grenville then asked a question which showed that he did not, or would not, understand Dr. Franklin. His question, however, seems for a moment to have nonplused the agents. "Can you agree," he asked, "on the proportion each colony should raise ?" They were obliged to admit that they could not. The minister pursuing his advantage said, that the stamp duty would adjust itself both to the present wealth and future increase of the colonies. It would be, he thought, at all times and in all places, a fair and equal tax. Upon this, the Americans returned to their main position, and pointed out the danger to the liberties of the colonies which would arise from their being taxed by a distant body in which they had no representative to explain their circumstances, or plead their cause. If parliament could impose taxes upon them, they feared that the colonial assemblies would decline in importance and soon cease to be called together. "No such thing is intended," replied Mr. Grenville. "I have pledged my word for offering the stamp bill to the House, and I cannot forego it: they will hear all objections, and do as they please. I wish you may preserve moderation in America. Resentments indecently expressed on one side of the water will naturally produce resentments on the other. You cannot hope to get any good by a controversy with the mother country. With respect to this bill, her ears will always be open to every remonstrance expressed in a becoming manner."* *Bancroft's "History of the United States," v.. 230. |