at this time, a strictly subordinate place; and he wonders
greatly, as he runs with eager interest through the
correspondence of Grenville for the year 1764, to find it barely
mentioned there. Whether the King received him less coldly today
than the day before yesterday was apparently more on the
minister's mind than any possibility that the Stamp Act might be
received rather warmly in the colonies. The contemporaries of
Grenville, even Pitt himself, have almost as little to say about
the coming great event; all of which compels the historian,
reviewing the matter judiciously, to reflect sadly that
Englishmen of that day were not as fully aware of the importance
of the measure before it was passed as good patriots have since
become.

There is much to confirm this notion in the circumstances
attending the passage of the bill through Parliament in the
winter of 1765. Grenville was perhaps further reassured, in spite
of persistent rumors of much high talk in America, by the results
of a second interview which he had with the colonial agents just
before introducing the measure into the House of Commons. "I take
no pleasure," he again explained in his reasonable way, "in
bringing upon myself their resentments; it is my duty to manage
the revenue. I have really been made to believe that, considering
the whole circumstances of the mother country and the colonies,
the latter can and ought to pay something to the common cause. I
know of no better way than that now pursuing to lay such a tax.
If you can tell of a better, I will adopt it."

Franklin, who was present with the others on this occasion,
ventured to suggest that the "usual constitutional way" of