eloquence, "be preserved inviolate to the utmost verge of our
dominions and to the latest pages of our history." But Americans
were clearly wrong in supposing the Stamp Act would deprive them
of the rights of Englishmen, for, upon any ground on which it
could be said that Englishmen were represented, it could be
maintained, and he was free to assert, that Americans were
represented, in Parliament, which was the common council of the
whole Empire.

The measure was well received. Mr. Jackson supposed that
Parliament had a right to tax America, but he much doubted the
expediency of the present act. If it was necessary, as ministers
claimed, to tax the colonies, the latter should be permitted to
elect some part of the Parliament, "otherwise the liberties of
America, I do not say will be lost, but will be in danger." The
one notable event of this "slight day" was occasioned by a remark
of Charles Townshend, who asked with some asperity whether "these
American children, planted by our care, nourished up by our
indulgence to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by
our arms," would now be so unfilial as to "grudge to contribute
their mite to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we
lie?" Upon which Colonel Isaac Barre sprang to his feet and
delivered an impassioned, unpremeditated reply which stirred the
dull House for perhaps three minutes

"They planted by YOUR care! No; your oppression planted them in
America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated,
inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all
the hardships to which human nature is liable .... They nourished
up by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them. As soon