d received the Secretary's letters and the accompanying
copies of the two Bills that had been passed by the British Parliament,
he hastened to make them known to the Assembly of Massachusetts. But
he made them known in a speech that was wholly lacking in either
temperance or discretion. Had it been at once his desire and his duty
to inflame his hearers against himself and the Government which he
represented he could hardly have chosen words more admirably adapted
for the purpose. With a wholly unchastened arrogance and a wholly
ungoverned truculence, the governor of the province lectured or rather
hectored the gentlemen of the Council and the {107} gentlemen of the
House of Representatives after a fashion that would have seemed in
questionable taste on the part of an old-fashioned pedagogue to a
parcel of unruly schoolboys. He was for bullying and blustering them
into a better behavior, and he assured those who were willing to make
amends and to promise to be good in the future that their past offences
would be buried in a charitable oblivion. "Too ready a forgetfulness
of injuries hath been said to be my weakness," Bernard urged with
strange ignorance. "However, it is a failing which I had rather suffer
by than be without."

The House of Representatives replied to the reproofs of their governor
in an address that was remarkable for the firmness with which it
maintained its own position and the irony with which it reviewed the
governor's pretensions. To prove their independence of action, they
delayed the Act of Indemnity demanded by Secretary Conway for several
months, and then accompanied it with a general pardon to all persons
who had been concerned in the riots provoked by the Stamp Act. Though
this Act was promptly disallowed by the Home Government on the ground
that the power of pardon belonged exclusively to the Crown, it took
effect nevertheless, and added another to the grievances of Bernard and
of his backers in England.

[Sidenote: 1766--End of the Rockingham Administration]

The slowly widening breach between the American colonies and the mother
country might even yet have been filled if it had been possible for the
King to depend upon the services and listen to the advice of ministers
whose good intentions and general good sense had the advantage of being
served and indirectly inspired by the genius of Burke. But unhappily,
the fortunes of the party with whom he was allied were not long fated
to