Indeed, they would think that it never could exercise such a right till
representatives from the Colonies should be admitted into Parliament,
and that whenever an occasion arose to make Parliament regard the
taxation of the Colonies as indispensable, representatives would be
ordered.
This last question put to the witness, like several others in the course
of his examination, had been framed with the express purpose of
eliciting an answer to justify the determination on the subject to which
Lord Rockingham and his colleagues had come. It could not be denied that
the government was placed in a situation of extreme difficulty--
difficulty created, in part, by the conduct of the Colonists themselves.
That, as even their most uncompromising advocate, Mr. Pitt, admitted,
had been imprudent and intemperate, though it was the imprudence of men
who "had been driven to madness by injustice." On the one hand, to
repeal an act the opposition to which had been marked by fierce riots,
such as those of Boston, and even in the Assemblies of some of the
States by language scarcely short of treason,[37] seemed a concession to
intimidation scarcely compatible with the maintenance of the dignity of
the crown or the legitimate authority of Parliament. On the other hand,
to persist in the retention of a tax which the whole population affected
by it was evidently determined to resist to the uttermost, was to incur
the still greater danger of rebellion and civil war.
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