of
these defections, the experiment was not without effect upon English
merchants. English merchants, but little interested in the decline or
increase of trade to particular colonies, were chiefly aware that the
total exportation to America was nearly a million pounds less in 1769
than in 1768. Understanding little about colonial rights, but knowing
only, as in 1766, that their "trade was hurt," they accordingly applied
once more to Parliament for relief. The commerce with America which was
"so essential to afford employment and subsistence to the manufactures
of these kingdoms, to augment the public revenue, to serve as a nursery
for seamen, and to increase our navigation and maritime strength"--this
commerce, said the Merchants and Traders of the City of London Trading
to America, "is at present in an alarming state of suspension"; and
the Merchants and Traders of the City of London therefore humbly
prayed Parliament to repeal the duties which were the occasion of their
inconveniences.

The petition of the London merchants came before the House on March 5,
1770, that being the day fixed by Lord North for proposing, on behalf
of the ministry, certain measures for America. No one, said the first
minister, could be more free than himself to recognize the importance
of American trade or more disposed to meet the wishes of the London
merchants as far as possible. The inconveniences under which that trade
now labored were manifest, but he could not think, with the petitioners,
that these inconveniences arose from "the nature of the duties" so much
as "through the medium of the dissatisfaction of the Americans,
and those combinations and associations of which we have
heard"--associations and combinations which had been called, in an
address to the House, "unwarrantable," but which he for his part would
go so far as to call illegal. These illegal combinations in America
were obviously what caused the inconveniences of which the merchants
complained. To the pressure of illegal combinations alone Parliament
ought never to yield; and ministers wished it clearly understood that,
if they were about to propose a repeal of some of the duties, they were
not led to take this step from any consideration of the disturbances in
the colonies.

On the contrary, the duties which it was now proposed to repeal--the
duties on lead, glass, and paper--were to be repealed strictly on
the ground that they ought never to have been laid, because d