George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

Pitt was a friend to liberty everywhere, and sought new guarantees for freedom in England. It was during the height of his power, that a bill was carried through the House of Commons, extending the provisions for awarding the writ of habeas corpus to all cases of commitment; and when the law lords obtained its rejection by the peers, he was but the more confirmed in his maxim, that ‘the lawyers are not to be regarded in questions of liberty.’ In a like spirit, Pitt now frowned upon every attempt against the rights of America. Charles Townshend and others, ever disposed to cavil at the promise of recompense, as contrary to their plan of taxation by parliament and a surrender of authority, were compelled to postpone their complaint, that the Americans, in peace the rivals of England, assumed in war to be allies, rather than subjects.

Of the designs, secretly maturing at the Board of Trade by Halifax and Rigby, the colonies were unsuspicious. The genius of Pitt and his respect for their rights, the prospect of conquering Canada and the West, and unbounded anticipations of future greatness, roused their most active zeal. In some of them, especially in New England, their contributions exceeded a just estimate of their ability. The thrifty people of Massachusetts disliked a funded debt, and avoided it by taxation. In addition to the sums expected from England, their tax, in one year of the war was, on personal estate, thirteen shillings and fourpence on the pound of income, and on two hundred pounds income from real estate was seventy-two pounds, besides various excises and a poll tax of nineteen