George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[222] by ignorance, prejudice and passion, by mis-

Chap. XX.} 1775. Feb.

conceptions and wilful perversion of plain truth, and was rejected on the first reading by a vote of sixtyone to thirty-two.

‘Hereditary legislators!’ thought Franklin. ‘There would be more propriety, in having hereditary professors of mathematics! But the elected house of commons is no better, nor ever will be while the electors receive money for their votes, and pay money wherewith ministers may bribe their representatives when chosen.’ Yet the wilfulness of the lords was happy for America; for Chatham's proposition contained clauses, to which it never could safely have assented, and yet breathed a spirit which must have calmed its resentment, distracted its councils, and palsied its will. It had now no choice left but between submission and independence.

The number and weight of the minority should have led the ministers to pause; but they rushed on with headlong indiscretion, thinking not to involve the empire in civil war, but to subdue the Americans by fear. The first step towards inspiring terror was, to declare Massachusetts in a state of rebellion, and to pledge the parliament and the whole force of Great Britain to its reduction; the next, by prohibiting the American fisheries, to starve New England; the next, to call out the savages on the rear of the colonies; the next, to excite a servile insurrection. Accordingly, Lord North on the day after Chatham's defeat, proposed to the commons a joint address to the king to declare that a rebellion existed in Massachusetts, and to pledge their lives and properties to its suppression.