Some show of reason for charging upon the patriots duplicity and lack of downright frankness was found in their professions of a steadfast, but still a qualified, loyalty. If there was not at first some confusion or vagueness in their own ideas on this point, they certainly set themselves open to such a misunderstanding by the ministry as to leave it in doubt whether they knew their own minds or candidly declared them. The controversy, from its beginning till its close, was constantly alleged to start from this discriminating standard of loyalty: the colonists repudiated the exercise of authority over them by Parliament and the ministry, and yet avowed themselves faithful and loyal subjects of the king. The king could govern and act only through Parliament. How could they repudiate the authority of Parliament and respect that of the king? What was to be the basis, scope, and mode of exercise of his authority? They certainly could not have in view the exercise of an autocracy over them, the restoration of the old royal prerogative which a previous glorious revolution had shattered. The king could exercise his authority in the colonial assemblies only through governors, and those governors had been rendered powerless here. Even the sage and philosophic Franklin found himself perplexed on this point. Writing from London to his son in New Jersey, March 13, 1768, he says: "I know not what the Boston people mean; what is the subordination they acknowledge in their Assembly to Parliament, while they deny its power to make laws for them?"[686] Galloway pertinently asked of the first Congress, "if they had any other union of the two countries more constitutional in view, why did they not petition for it?" "The Congress, while they professed themselves subjects, spoke in the language of allies, and were openly acting the part of enemies."[687] How are we to reconcile two statements made by Pitt in the same speech, in January, 1776: "This kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies." "At the same time, on every real point of legislation, I believe the authority of Parliament to be fixed as the Polar Star." Without any attempt to conceive or fashion a definition of their ideal, the good common sense of the patriots at last worked out the conclusion that their emancipation from the Parliament involved a dispensing with the king.[688]