Accordingly, when, after Lord Rockingham had become
Prime-minister, Parliament met in December, 1765, the royal speech
recommended the state of affairs in America to the consideration of
Parliament (a recommendation which manifestly implied a disposition on
the part of the King's advisers to induce the House of Commons to
retrace its steps), papers were laid before Parliament, and witnesses
from America were examined, and among them a man who had already won a
high reputation by his scientific acquirements, but who had not been
previously prominent as a politician, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. He had come
over to England as agent for Pennsylvania, and his examination, as
preserved in the "Parliamentary History," may be taken as a complete
statement of the matter in dispute from the American point of view, and
of the justification which the Colonists conceived themselves to have
for refusing to submit to pay such a tax as had now been imposed upon
them. At a later day he was one of the most zealous, as he was probably
one of the earliest, advocates of separation from England; but as yet
neither his language nor his actions afforded any trace of such a
feeling.
He affirmed[36] the general temper of the Colonists toward Great Britain
to have been, till this act was passed, the best in the world.
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