obtaining colonial support, through the King's requisition, would
be better. "Can you agree," asked Grenville, "on the proportions
each colony should raise?" No, they could not agree, as Franklin
was bound to admit, knowing the fact better than most men. And if
no adequate answer was forthcoming from Franklin, a man so ready
in expedients and so practiced in the subtleties of dialectic, it
is no great wonder that Grenville thought the agents now fully
convinced by his reasoning, which after all was only an
impersonal formulation of the inexorable logic of the situation.

Proceeding thus leisurely, having taken so much pains to elicit
reasonable objection and none being forthcoming, Grenville, quite
sure of his ground, brought in from the Ways and Means Committee,
in February, 1765, the fifty-five resolutions which required that
stamped paper, printed by the government and sold by officers
appointed for that purpose, be used for nearly all legal
documents, for all customs papers, for appointments to all
offices carrying a salary of 20 pounds except military and
judicial offices, for all grants of privilege and franchises made
by the colonial assemblies, for Licenses to retail liquors, for
all pamphlets, advertisements, handbills, newspapers, almanacs,
and calendars, and for the sale of packages containing playing
cards and dice. The expediency of the act was now explained to
the House, as it had been explained to the agents. That the act
was legal, which few people in fact denied, Grenville, doing
everything thoroughly and with system, proceeded to demonstrate
also. The colonies claim, he said, "the privilege of all British
subjects of being taxed only with their own consent." Well, for
his part, he hoped they might always enjoy that privilege. "May
this sacred pledge of liberty," cried the minister with unwonted