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

[416] of Locke, and the principles of the revolution of 1688,

chap. XXII.} 1766. Feb.

against the right of the colonists to enjoy English liberty; against the inherent distinction between taxation and legislation, which pervaded modern history; against the solemn compacts which parliament itself had recognised as existing between the crown and the colonies; against the rights of the American assemblies, whose duty it ever is to obtain redress of material grievances, before making grants of money, and whose essence would be destroyed by a transfer from them of the powers of taxation; against justice, for Great Britain could have interests conflicting with those of the colonies; against reason, for the assemblies of the colonists could know their own abilities and circumstances better than the Commons of England; against good policy, which could preserve America only as Rome had preserved her distant colonies, not by the number of its legions, but by lenient magnanimity.

Only three men, or rather Pitt alone, ‘debated strenuously the rights of America’ against more than as many hundred;¹ and yet the House of Commons, half-conscious of the fatality of its decision, was so awed by the overhanging shadow of coming events that it seemed to shrink from pronouncing its opinion. Edmund Burke, eager to add glory as an orator to his just renown as an author, argued for England's right in such a manner, that the strongest friends of power declared his speech to have been ‘far superior to that of every other speaker;’ while Grenville, Yorke, and all the lawyers, the temperate Richard Hussey, who yet was practically for humanity and justice,