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[130]

Grenville and his friends1 insisted on declaring

Chap. XXXII.} 1768. Feb.
meetings and associations like those of Boston illegal and punishable; and advised some immediate chastisement. ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘every American in the world could hear me. I gave the Americans bounties on their whale fishery, thinking they would obey the Acts of Parliament;’ and he now spoke for a prohibition of their fisheries.2 Some of the Ministry went far beyond him, and were ready to proceed against Massachusetts with immediate and extreme severity.3 When America was mentioned, nothing could be heard but the bitterest invectives of its enemies. That it must submit, no one questioned.

While Hillsborough was writing4 encomiums on Bernard, praising his own ‘justice and lenity,’ and lauding the King as the tender and affectionate father of all his subjects, the superior discernment of Choiseul was aware of the importance of the rising controversy; and that he might unbosom his thoughts with freedom, he appointed to the place of ambassador in England his own most confidential friend, the Count du Chatelet,5 son of the celebrated woman with whom Voltaire had been intimately connected. The new diplomatist was a person of quick perceptions, daring courage as a statesman, and perfect knowledge of the world; and he was, also, deeply imbued with the liberal principles of the French philosophy of his age.

1 W. S. Johnson's Journal, 15 Feb. 1768, and W. S. Johnson to Pitkin, 12 March, 1768.

2 Nathaniel Rogers to Hutchinson, 27 Feb. 1768.

3 W. S. Johnson to Pitkin, 12 March, 1768; Journal, 18 Feb. 1768.

4 Hillsborough to Bernard, 16 February, 1768.

5 Du Chatelet to Choiseul, 13 Feb. 1768.

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