George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[368] of December waited on Rockingham, Dowdeswell,

chap. XX.} 1765. Dec.

Conway, and Dartmouth, were received with dispassionate calmness, it was announced that the right to tax Americans could never be given up; and that a suspension was ‘the most that could be expected.’¹

The successive accounts from America grieved the king more and more. ‘Where this spirit will end,’ said he, ‘is not to be said. It is undoubtedly the most serious matter that ever came before parliament,’² and he urged for it ‘deliberation, candor, and temper.’ He was highly provoked³ by the riots in New-York; and the surrender of the stamps to the municipality of the city seemed to him ‘greatly humiliating.’ He watched with extreme anxiety the preliminary meeting of the friends of the ministry; and when the day for opening parliament came, he was impatient to receive a minute report of all that should occur.⁴

The Earl of Hardwicke,⁵ himself opposed to the lenity of Rockingham,⁶ moved the address in the House of Lords, pledging the House ‘to bring to the consideration of the state of affairs in America, a resolution to do every thing which the exigency of the case might require.’ The Earl of Suffolk, a young man of five-and-twenty, proposed ‘to express indignation at the insurrections in North America, and concurrence in measures to enforce the legal obedience of the colonies, and their dependence on the sovereign authority of the kingdom.’ This amendment