Chap. XXIX.} 1767. May. |
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and whom nobody minded; ‘heal the disease by
doing nothing.’1
Others thought there should be an amendment to the Billeting Act itself, directing the civil magistrates to quarter upon private houses, where the Assemblies of America did not fulfil the present requirements.
Grenville advised to invest the Governor and Council of each Colony with power to draw on the colonial treasurer, who, in case of refusal to answer such bills out of the first aids in his hands, howsoever appropriated, should be judged guilty of a capital crime and be tried and punished in England.
And since the Colonies persisted in the denial of the Parliamentary right of taxation, he offered for consideration, that every American, before entering into office, should subscribe a political Test nearly in the words of the Declaratory Act, acknowledging the unlimited sovereignty of Great Britain.
These several points were discussed till one in the morning, when a question was so framed by Grenville, that the Rockinghams could join him in the division; but their united voices were no more than ninety-eight against one hundred and eighty.
‘The new measures for the Colonies,’ observed Choiseul,2 ‘will, no doubt, meet with opposition in both Houses of Parliament; but their execution will encounter still more considerable resistance in America.’
On the fifteenth of May, Townshend reported his resolutions to the House, when a strenuous effort was made to have them re-committed; the friends of
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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