to impose taxes as long as the Stamp Act was repealed. Rockingham, thus encouraged, thereupon introduced the Declaratory Act, not because he had any liking for it, but because in his opinion many people of high principles would never have been brought to repeal the Stamp Act without it.' "It was not the inclination of Lord Rockingham," said Charles James Fox some years later, "but the necessity of his situation, which was the cause of the Declaratory Act. The Act passed the House of Commons without a division, and, in the House of Lords, when Lord Camden insisted on a division, there were only four peers who voted with him 'non-content.""""

The House of Commons had on January 21 given leave to Conway to bring in a bill to repeal the Stamp duty, and had rejected by 275 to 167

1 Life of Lord Camden.

2 Chatham Correspondence.

"My position is this. I repeat it. I will maintain it to my latest hour. Taxation and representation are inseparable. This position is founded on the laws of nature. It is more. It is an eternal law of nature; for whatever is a man's own is absolutely his own. No man has a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or his representatives. Whoever attempts to do so attempts an injury. Whoever does it commits a robbery. He throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery."-Lord Camden in the House of Lords, February 24, 1766.

REPEAL CARRIED

25

Grenville's amendment to substitute explain and amend" for " repeal." The Bill was read for the first time on February 21 and in the long and fierce debates that ensued Grenville took an active part in defence of his measure. "It was," said Horace Walpole, "too much to give up his favourite Bill and his favourite occupation, talking, both at once." Though vigorously contested to the end, the Bill passed the lower chamber, and was on March 4 carried to the House of Lords, where, says George Onslow, it met "with not quite so civil a reception as such a bill, so carried in our House, and so conveyed as it was, by a hundred and fifty members to the other House, did, in my opinion, deserve." After two divisions, each of which resulted in a majority for ministers, the Bill passed the House of Lords and on March 18 received the Royal Assent, "an event that caused more universal joy," Burke said, "throughout the British dominions" than perhaps any other that can be remembered, and left Grenville to lament that "it was clear that both England and America were now governed by the mob."

CHAPTER XIV

THE KING versus ROCKINGHAM AND THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT

THOUGH in his farewell interview with Grenville, in answer to a question of the departing minister as to how he had incurred his Majesty's displeasure, the King stated that his late ministers had put too much "constraint " upon him, and instead of asking or tendering advice, had expected obedience, Grenville insisted in attributing his fall to the machinations of Lord Bute-and this in spite of the fact that George assured him that Lord Bute had no hand in advising the present change." 1

There is scarcely any doubt that the King spoke the truth, for his dislike of Grenville was alone sufficient to explain his desire for a change of ministers. "I had rather see the devil in my closet than George Grenville," he said emphatically; and though in later years he spoke with some appreciation of Grenville's talents, he could never bring himself to forgive the minister's conduct in the last weeks of his administration.

1 Grenville Papers.