Instead of making
reparation, he added, letters had been recently received which conveyed
intelligence of renewed acts of violence. In the course of the debate
one member uttered these remarkable words:--"I will now take my leave of
the whole plan: you will commence your ruin from this day. I am sorry to
say, that not only the house has fallen into this error, but the people
approve of the measure. The people, I am sorry to say it, are misled.
But a short time will prove the evil tendency of this bill. If ever
there was a nation running headlong to its ruin it is this." The people
were, in fact, as violently excited against the Americans, and the
Bostonians in particular, as the ministers themselves, which doubtless
had the effect of encouraging them in their measures. As a dissolution
of parliament was near at hand, this may have caused the absence of many
members; for it is a remarkable circumstance, that during the debates
on these momentous questions there never was a full house. On the
third reading, indeed, only one hundred and fifty-one members were
present--one hundred and twenty-seven out of which number voted for the
measure.
In the house of lords the bill was opposed in the same manner, and to
a similar degree as in the commons. One of the most striking arguments
against the measure was uttered by the Marquess of Rockingham. After
reviewing ministerial transactions relative to America, since the repeal
of the Stamp Act, and denouncing the tea duty as an uncommercial
and unproductive claim, retained only as a bone of contention, he
remarked:--"If officers were men of honour and sensibility, their
situation would be worse under the protection of such a law than without
it, as no acquittal could be honourable where the prosecutor had not the
usual means of securing a fair trial.
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