of trade and new industries. Great towns were without representation, while
boroughs, such as Old Sarum, without a single voter, still claimed, and had, a
seat in Parliament. Such districts, or "rotten boroughs," were owned and
controlled by many of the great landowners. Both Walpole and Newcastle resorted
to the outright purchase of these seats, and when the time came George did not
shrink from doing the same thing. He went even further. All preferments of
whatsoever sort were bestowed upon those who would do his bidding, and the
business of bribery assumed such proportions that an office was opened at the
Treasury for this purpose, from which twenty-five thousand pounds are said to
have passed in a single day. Parliament had been for a long time only partially
representative of the people; it now ceased to be so almost completely.

With, the support which such methods secured, along with encouragement from his
ministers, the king was prepared to put in operation his policy for regulating
the affairs of America. Writs of Assistance (1761) were followed by the passage
of the Stamp Act (1765). The ostensible object of both these measures was to
help pay the debt incurred by the French war, but the real purpose lay deeper,
and was nothing more or less than the ultimate extension of parliamentary rule,
in great things as well as small, to America. At this crisis, so momentous for
the colonists, the Rockingham ministry was formed, and Burke, together with
Pitt, supported a motion for the unconditional repeal of the Stamp Act. After
much wrangling, the motion was carried, and the first blunder of the mother
country seemed to have been smoothed over.

Only a few months elapsed, however, when the question of taxing the colonies was
revived. Pitt lay ill, and could take no part in the proposed measure. Through
the influence of other members of his party,--notably Townshend,--a series of
acts were passed, imposing duties on several exports to America. This was
followed by a suspension of the New York Assembly, because it had disregarded
instructions in the matter of supplies for the troops. The colonists were