Chap. XXXIX.} 1769. Feb. |
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would not submit to it.’
On the other side little was
urged, except that concession would endanger the Act of Navigation; and the British Parliament after long deliberation, by a great majority, refusing to consider the redress of American grievances, requested the King to make inquisition at Boston for Treason, and to bring over the accused for trial before a Special Commission, away from their country, their relations, friends, and witnesses.
It was hoped to make Boston tremble, and terrify the zealous Americans with the apprehension of being arraigned in Westminster Hall and hanged at Tyburn.
The press also gave to the world an elaborate reply1 to the Farmer's Letters, for which the Board of Trade furnished the materials,2 and Grenville himself wrote the constitutional argument.3 ‘I am tempted,’ confessed Knox, the champion of the Ministry, ‘to deny that there is any such thing as Representation at all in the British Constitution; until this notion of Representation is overthrown, it will be very difficult to convince, either the Colonies or the people of England, that wrong is not done the Colonies.’4 The question of British and of American Liberty was identical.
The zeal against America was ready to sacrifice the principle of Representative Government in England; where the love of order began to find apologists for ‘absolute Government.’5
1 The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies reviewed, &c. &c., 1769.
2 I. Mauduit to Hutchinson, 10 Feb. 1769.
3 Grenville wrote from page 67 to page 86 inclusive. Knox's extra official State Papers, Appendix to Part II. page 15.
4 Knox in Grenville Papers, IV. 336, 337.
5 Whately to Grenville, 25 March, 1769; in Grenville Papers, IV. 417.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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