Grenville was naturally bold, as Cardinal de Retz said of Anne of Austria, because he was neither prudent nor far-sighted. He was at once absolute and without tact. The extension to the colonies of the stamp tax had been voted almost without opposition. Mr. Pitt himself had not protested. Thoughtlessly, and in consequence of the financial embarrassment brought on by the war, the English government, without systematic scheme, and without _arrière pensée_, had committed itself to a fatal line of policy in which the national pride was to sustain it too long. The taxes were light and could not entail any suffering on the colonists. They were the first to recognize this themselves. "What is the matter, and what are we disputing about?" said Washington in 1766. "Is it about the payment of a tax of threepence a pound on tea being too burdensome? No, it is the principle alone which we contest."
A general and speedily riotous protestation was made in 1765, in New England, in the name of the rights of the colonies, unjustly violated by the pretensions of the metropolis. At Boston the people arose and broke into the house of the distributors of stamped paper. The ships which happened to be in port lowered their flags to half-mast, in token of mourning, and the church bells sounded the funeral toll. At Philadelphia the inhabitants spiked the cannons on the ramparts. At Williamsburg the House of Burgesses of Virginia resounded with the most violent menaces, and in the midst of the discussion of the Stamp Act, Patrick Henry, who was still very young, uttered these words: "Caesar found his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III. ... !" "Treason! treason!" cried the royalists. "And George III. will doubtless profit from their example," retorted the young orator. The remonstrance which he had proposed was voted.
The attitude of the American people and the numerous petitions which revealed it had warned Pitt of the danger. He openly attacked the cabinet and called for the repeal of the Stamp Act. "The colonists," said he, "are subjects of this kingdom, entitled equally with yourselves to the special privileges of Englishmen. They are bound by English laws, and to the same extent as we. They have a right to the liberties of this country. The Americans are the sons, and not the bastards, of England. When we agree in this House to the subsidies to his Majesty, we dispose of that which belongs to ourselves; but when we impose a tax on the Americans, what are we doing? We, the Commons of England, give what to his Majesty? Our personal property? No. We give the property of the Commons of America. It is a contradiction of terms. I demand that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, completely, immediately; that the reason of the repeal shall be proclaimed. { 267} The principle on which the act was based was false. At the same time let the supreme authority of this country over her colonies be clearly affirmed in the most decided terms that can be imagined. We can bind their commerce, restrain their manufactures, and exercise our power under every form. We cannot, we should not, take the money in their pockets without their consent."