chap. XXIII.} 1766. Feb. |
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curred by those who should proceed to execute their
offices.1
Trecothick then answered rightly in the House of Commons, that nothing but the repeal of the Stamp Act would satisfy America.
Yet the opponents of concession claimed for their side the name of the king, whose opinions they declared that Rockingham had falsified.
The irritated chief summoned the author of the rumor to meet him at the palace.
There, on Wednesday, the twelfth of February, they went into the closet alternately,2 two or three times each, to reconcile the seeming contradiction.
For fear of mistakes, Rockingham wrote with a pencil these words: ‘Lord Rockingham was authorized by his majesty, on Friday last, to say that his majesty was for the repeal.’
‘It is very true,’ said the king, as he read the paper; ‘but I must make an addition to it;’ upon which he took a pen, and wrote at the end of it, ‘the conversation having been only concerning that or enforcing.’
He added, ‘I desire you would tell Lord Strange, that I am now, and have been heretofore, for modification.3’ So Rockingham was disavowed, and the opposition declared more than ever that the ministers counterfeited as well as prostituted the sentiments of the king, whose unwritten word they would not trust,4 and whose written word convicted them of falsehood.
On the same day, Bedford and Grenville went to
1 Pennsylvania Journal, 13 March, 1766.
2 From the Diary of the Earl of Dartmouth, who at that moment was in the antechamber, and received the, account from Rockingham on his coming out from the king. Compare Albemarle, i. 301.
3 King to Rockingham in Albemarble, i. 302.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
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