was under consideration. Far from anything inflammatory, I never
heard a more languid debate in this house.... In fact, the
affair passed with so very, very little noise, that in town they
scarcely knew the nature of what you were doing." So far as men
concerned themselves with the doings of Parliament, the colonial
measures of Grenville were greatly applauded; and that not alone
by men who were ignorant of America. Thomas Pownall, once
Governor of Massachusetts, well acquainted with the colonies and
no bad friend of their liberties, published in April, 1764, a
pamphlet on the "Administration of the Colonies" which he
dedicated to George Grenville, "the great minister," who he
desired might live to see the "power, prosperity, and honor that
must be given to his country, by so great and important an event
as the interweaving the administration of the colonies into the
British administration."



CHAPTER III. The Rights Of A Nation

British subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a
wilderness, extending the domain, and increasing the wealth,
commerce, and power of the mother country, at the hazard of their
lives and fortunes, ought not, and in fact do not thereby lose
their native rights.--Benjamin Franklin.

It was the misfortune of Grenville that this "interweaving," as
Pownall described it, should have been undertaken at a most
inopportune time, when the very conditions which made Englishmen
conscious of the burden of empire were giving to Americans a new