one point, are sure to burrow in another: but they shall have no refuge;
I will make them bolt out of all their holes. Conscious that they must
be baffled, when they attribute a precedent disturbance to a subsequent
measure, they take other ground, almost as absurd, but very common in
modern practice, and very wicked; which is, to attribute the ill effect
of ill-judged conduct to the arguments which had been used to dissuade
us from it. They say, that the opposition made in Parliament to the
Stamp Act, at the time of its passing, encouraged the Americans to their
resistance. This has even formally appeared in print in a regular volume
from an advocate of that faction,--a Dr. Tucker. This Dr. Tucker is
already a dean, and his earnest labors in this vineyard will, I suppose,
raise him to a bishopric. But this assertion, too, just like the rest,
is false. In all the papers which have loaded your table, in all the
vast crowd of verbal witnesses that appeared at your bar, witnesses
which were indiscriminately produced from both sides of the House, not
the least hint of such a cause of disturbance has ever appeared. As to
the fact of a strenuous opposition to the Stamp Act, I sat as a stranger
in your gallery when the act was under consideration. Far from anything
inflammatory, I never heard a more languid debate in this House. No more
than two or three gentlemen, as I remember, spoke against the act, and
that with great reserve and remarkable temper. There was but one
division in the whole progress of the bill; and the minority did not
reach to more than 39 or 40. In the House of Lords I do not recollect
that there was any debate or division at all. I am sure there was no
protest. In fact, the affair passed with so very, very little noise,
that in town they scarcely knew the nature of what you were doing. The
opposition to the bill in England never could have done this mischief,
because there scarcely ever was less of opposition to a bill of
consequence.