These are the words of Governor Bernard's letter to a member of the old
ministry, and which he has since printed.

Mr. Grenville could not have made this proposition to the agents for
another reason. He was of opinion, which he has declared in this House
an hundred times, that the colonies could not legally grant any revenue
to the crown, and that infinite mischiefs would be the consequence of
such a power. When Mr. Grenville had passed the first revenue act, and
in the same session had made this House come to a resolution for laying
a stamp-duty on America, between that time and the passing the Stamp Act
into a law he told a considerable and most respectable merchant, a
member of this House, whom I am truly sorry I do not now see in his
place, when he represented against this proceeding, that, if the
stamp-duty was disliked, he was willing to exchange it for any other
equally productive,--but that, if he objected to the Americans being
taxed by Parliament, he might save himself the trouble of the
discussion, as he was determined on the measure. This is the fact, and,
if you please, I will mention a very unquestionable authority for it.

Thus, Sir, I have disposed of this falsehood. But falsehood has a
perennial spring. It is said that no conjecture could be made of the
dislike of the colonies to the principle. This is as untrue as the
other. After the resolution of the House, and before the passing of the
Stamp Act, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and New York did send
remonstrances objecting to this mode of Parliamentary taxation. What was
the consequence? They were suppressed, they were put under the table,
notwithstanding an order of Council to the contrary, by the ministry
which composed the very Council that had made the order; and thus the
House proceeded to its business of taxing without the least regular
knowledge of the objections which were made to it. But to give that