now have it in their power, by agreeing to this tax, to establish a
precedent for their being consulted before any tax is imposed upon them
by Parliament; for their approbation of it being signified to Parliament
next year... will afford a forcible argument for the like proceeding
in all such cases. If they think of any other mode of taxation more
convenient to them, and make any proposition of equal efficacy with the
stamp duty, I will give it all due consideration."

The agents appear at least to have been silenced by this speech, which
was, one must admit, so fatherly and so very reasonable in tone; and
doubtless Grenville thought them convinced, too, since he always so
perfectly convinced himself. At all events, he found it possible, for
this or for some other reason, to put the whole matter out of his mind
until the next year. The patriotic American historian, well instructed
in the importance of the Stamp Act, has at first a difficulty in
understanding how it could occupy, among the things that interested
English statesmen at this time, a strictly subordinate place; and
he wonders greatly, as he runs with eager interest through the
correspondence of Grenville for the year 1764, to find it barely
mentioned there. Whether the King received him less coldly today than
the day before yesterday was apparently more on the minister's mind than
any possibility that the Stamp Act might be received rather warmly in
the colonies. The contemporaries of Grenville, even Pitt himself, have
almost as little to say about the coming great event; all of which
compels the historian, reviewing the matter judiciously, to reflect
sadly that Englishmen of that day were not as fully aware of the
importance of the measure before it was passed as good patriots have
since become.

There is much to confirm this notion in the circumstances attending the
passage of the bill through Parliament in the winter of 1765. Grenville
was perhaps further reassured, in spite of persistent rumors of much
high talk in America, by the results of a second interview which he had
with the colonial agents just before introducing the measure into
the House of Commons. "I take no pleasure," he again explained in his
reasonable way, "in bringing upon myself their resentments; it is my
duty to manage the revenue. I have really been made to believe that,
considering the whole circumstances of the mother country and the
colonies, the latter can and ought to pay somet