ions of trade
are neither equitable nor just; but the power of taxing is the grand
banner of British liberty. If that is once broken down, all is lost."
The distinction was accepted by the assembly of every colony; and it was
with their protest and offer that they despatched Benjamin Franklin, who
had risen from his position of a working printer in Philadelphia to high
repute among scientific discoverers, as their agent to England. In
England Franklin found few who recognized the distinction which the
colonists had drawn; it was indeed incompatible with the universal
belief in the omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament. But there were
many who held that such taxation was unadvisable, that the control of
trade was what a country really gained from its colonies, that it was no
work of a statesman to introduce radical changes into relations so
delicate as those of a mother country and its dependencies, and that,
boundless as was the power of Parliament in theory, "it should
voluntarily set bounds to the exercise of its power." It had the right
to tax Ireland but it never used it. The same self-restraint might be
extended to America, and the more that the colonists were in the main
willing to tax themselves for the general defence. Unluckily Franklin
could give no assurance as to a union for the purpose of such taxation,
and without such an assurance Grenville had no mind to change his plans.
In February 1765 the Stamp Act was passed through both Houses with less
opposition than a turnpike bill.

At this critical moment Pitt was absent from the House of Commons. "When
the resolution was taken to tax America, I was ill and in bed," he said
a few months later. "If I could have endured to be carried in my bed, so
great was the agitation of my mind for the consequences, I would have
solicited some kind hand to have laid me down on this floor, to have
borne my testimony against it." He was soon however called to a position
where his protest might have been turned to action. The Stamp Act was
hardly passed when an insult offered to the Princess Dowager, by the
exclusion of her name from a Regency Act, brought to a head the quarrel
which had long been growing between the ministry and the king. George
again offered power to William Pitt, and so great was his anxiety to
free himself from Grenville's dictation that he consented absolutely to
Pitt's terms. He waived his objection to that general return of the
whole Whig party to offic