I doubt much
whether you will be able to keep them on any terms; but sure I am
such are your well-known characters and abilities, that any plan of
reconciliation, however moderate, wise, and feasible, must fail in your
hands. Such, then, being your precarious situation, who could wonder
that you should put a negative on any measure which must annihilate your
power, deprive you of your emoluments, and at once reduce you to that
state of insignificance for which God and nature designed you." Earls
Gower and Hillsborough reprobated this severe language of Chatham, as
calculated to inflame the public mind both here and in the colonies, and
questioned if the noble lord would not, on some future day, if his age
permitted, give another of the many proofs of his versatility, by acting
with the ministers he condemned, and patronising the measures he now
censured. Upon a division, the bill was rejected by a majority of
sixty-one against thirty-two. Its rejection proved a fine theme out of
doors for those adverse to the ministry. A vote of thanks was passed by
the corporation of the city of London to Chatham, for his humane design;
and Franklin enlarged upon the folly and madness of the ministers in
rejecting it, although he had not expressed his approbation of it even
to Chatham himself. He obtained, however, by its introduction what he
most wanted--namely, a subject by means of which he could widen the
breach between America and the "dear old mother country.
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