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organizing public opinion as a regular and powerful check upon authority.

In the address from the throne, at the opening of the session, the new ministry brought the state of colonial affairs before Parliament. They produced the correspondence of the colonial governors, and other papers relating to the late disturbance. Numerous petitions from British merchants, for the repeal of the Stamp Act, were also presented to the two Houses. (1766.)

Pitt, for some time past withdrawn by sickness from public affairs, was unconnected, at this moment, with either Grenville's or Rockingham's party. He now appeared in his place in the House of Commons, and delivered his opinion, that the kingdom had no right to levy a tax on the colonies." "The Commons in America, represented in their several assemblies, have invariably exercised the constitutional right of giving and granting their own money; they would have been slaves if they had not; at the same time, this kingdom has ever possessed the power of legislative and commercial control. The colonies acknowledge your authority in all things, with the sole exception that you shall not take their money out of their pockets without their consent."

This decided avowal by Pitt, made a profound impression on the House. After a long pause, Grenville rose to vindicate the Stamp Act. The tumults in America bordered, he averred, on open rebellion; but if the doctrines now promulgated were upheld, they would soon lose that name, and become a revolution. Taxation was a branch of the sovereign power, constantly exercised by Parliament, over the unrepresented. Resorting, then, to a method of intimidation common with politicians, "the seditious spirit of the colonies," he said, "owes its birth to the faction in this House." This invidious assault was met by Pitt with characteristic intrepidity. "A charge is brought against gentlemen sitting in this House, of giving birth to sedition in America. The freedom with which they have spoken their sentiments against this unhappy act, is imputed to them as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me." "We are told America is obstinate-America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to

submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." "The Americans have been wronged! They have been driven to madness by injustice! Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? No! Let this country be the first to resume its prudence and temper; I will pledge myself for the colonies, that on their part, animosity and resentment will cease.'

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The new ministry were under no obligation to support the policy of their predecessors. Anxious to escape the difficulty by the readiest means, they brought in a bill for repealing the Stamp Act. Franklin, summoned to the bar of the House as a witness, testified that the act could never be enforced. His prompt and pointed answers gained him great credit for information, acuteness, and presence of mind. In favor of repeal, Burke, introduced into Parliament by Rockingham, to whom he had been private secretary, and for one of whose rotten boroughs he sat, gave his eloquent support. In spite of a very strenuous opposition on the part of the supporters of the late ministry, the bill of repeal was carried in the House of Commons, by a vote of two hundred and seventy-five to one hundred and sixty-seven.

But the ministers by no means went the length of Pitt. They placed the repeal on the ground of expediency merely, and they softened the opposition by another bill, previously passed, which asserted the power and right of Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever." Lord Camden, formerly Chief-justice Pratt, made a vigorous opposition to this bill, in the House of Lords. "My position is this-I repeat it I will maintain it to the last hour-taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in the law of nature. It is more it is itself an eternal law of nature." Lord Mansfield, on the other hand, maintained the sovereign power of Parliament as including the right to tax; an idea quite too flattering to the pride of authority to be easily relinquished.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Dawn of the Revolutionary Period-Humorous "History of John Bull's Children "-Contrast between causes which led to the Revolution of 1688, in England, and those which led to the American Revolution; from Judge Drayton's Charge, in 1776.

We now come to a new era of struggle, in the history of "Sam," by, and through which, his youthful prowess, thus continually exercised, as we have witnessed, becomes meet for successful collison with the uttermost force which is likely to array itself against his future. He has one more covert

foe, with whom it is necessary that he should be finally "at quits," and who, (though not necessarily an internal one as are the Jesuits!) is yet, through his machinations, as dangerous, and even more important.

As usual, with the most serious affairs of the kind-it is a family quarrel, in which his elder first cousin, John Bull, assumes a domineering and pugilistic attitude, to the great tribulation of Sam-who, for the very reason that he was born of nothing but a cloud, was particularly sensitive about the matter of descent, primogeniture, reversions, titles, etc. Now all this may seem to have been very inconsistent on his part, but a slight sketch of his family history about those times, will illustrate these traits of Sam sufficiently.

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We find the following in the "Maryland Gazette" of August, 1776, into which it was copied from the "London Chronicle."

I, Sir Humphrey Polesworth, who formerly gave the world a true and faithful account of John Bull, and of his mother,

and his sister, and wives, and his servants, now write the history of his children, and how they were got, and how they were educated, and what befell them. Courteous reader, if thou hast any curiosity to know these things, read the following chapters, and learn.

CHAPTER I.-Of seven natural children, which John Bull had in his younger days by Doll Secretary, his mother's maid; namely, three boys, John, junior, or master Jacky, Yorky, and Jerry: four girls, Penelope, Mary, Virgy, and Caroline. How the old lady would suffer no bastards in her family; and how the poor infants were turned adrift on the fish-ponds as soon as born; how they landed on the western shore, and were there nursed by a wild bear, all under the green wood tree.

CHAPTER II.-How John disowned them, and left them to get over the children's disorders the best way they could, without paying a farthing for nurses, or apothecary's bills; and how, as soon as they had cut their eye-teeth, and were able to walk alone, John claimed them for his own.

CHAPTER III.-How Master Jacky turned fisherman and ship-carpenter. Yorky and Jerry drove a great trade; Miss Penny dealt in flour, called the Maid of the Mill, and never courtesied to anybody. How Mary and Virgy set up a snuff-shop; and Caroline turned dry salter, and sold indigo; and how they all flourished exceedingly, and laid out every penny they earned, in their father's warehouse.

CHAPTER IV. Of two children more, that John had afterward, in lawful wedlock (viz: a boy whom he called Georgy, after his great patron, and a girl, whom he called Peg, after his sister Margaret); how he crammed them with sugarplums, and how they remain sickly, rickety brats to this day.

CHAPTER V.-How young Master Baboon, old Louis' only son, fell in love with Miss Virgy, and how he came behind with intent to ravish her; how she squealed, and alarmed her dad.

CHAPTER VI.-How John called for his stick and his barge, and crossed the pond to save his daughter's virtue; how young Louis gave him a confounded rap on his fingers and drove him back; then at his daughter again.

CHAPTER VII.-How her brother Jack came to her assistance, and threw young Louis on his back; how old Louis

Baboon flew to help his son, and carried Lord Strutt along with him; how John Bull returned and mustered all his children at his back, and to it they went.

CHAPTER VIII.-How they had a long tussle; how John's children saved their old dad from a broken head, and helped to seize young Louis and tie him; how the old folks agreed to leave young Louis in custody, and drink friends themselves; and how John made his children pay a share of the reckoning, without giving them any of the drink.

CHAPTER IX.-How John, in his cups, bragged of his exploits, and said he had done all himself, and his children nothing; how he made choice of fair George, the gentle shepherd, for his house-steward, and because he could tell, without the book, that two and three make five, and had the multiplication table by heart.

CHAPTER X.-The whole stewardship of fair George-how he neglected to protest Louis Baboon's note of hand on the day of payment, and released Lord Strutt from a mortgage on his manor of Eastland; how he took an aversion to cider, and would allow none to be drunk in his family; how he rummaged every man's chest for pen, ink, and paper, and obliged those he caught writing, to stand atop of the table, with a wooden neckcloth under their chin, while he counted sixty times sixty; and how this is called the gentle shepherd's benefit of the clergy, unto this day.

CHAPTER XI.-How fair George took an antipathy to John's children, because he said they put nothing into the box at Christmas; and when they came to pay their shop accounts, they brought in their money at the back door; how he advised John to brand them on the far buttock, as they do stray cattle, that he might know them as his own.

CHAPTER XII.-How John's children rode restive, and swore they would not have the broad R. stamped on their b-ks-des; how John, in heating the irons, burnt his own fingers, most d-ly; how all his neighbors laughed, and fair George could not find him a plaster.

CHAPTER XIII.-How John, in a passion, kicked fair George down stairs, and rung up other servants; how they advised him to consult his wife; and how Mrs. Bull advised him to let his children alone; that, though they were born in sin, they were his own flesh and blood, and needed no stamp to show

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