150 Repeal of the Stamp Act. [me interest which Burke took in the colonies he had already shown by publishing the best comprehensive account of them then extant; and he approached the whole question of colonial administration with a sympathetic interest and a detailed knowledge hardly to be found in any other public man in England. His party, too, were on friendly terms with that small section of independent members who had opposed the Stamp Act. Pitt, who had been incapacitated by illness when the Stamp Act passed, reappeared. At the opening of the session the Ministry laid before Parliament all the papers touching the disturbances which had taken place in America. Pitt at once advocated the immediate and total repeal of the Stamp Act ; but his support of the government was given with such reservations that it did little to strengthen the general position of the Ministry. Confidence, he said, was a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom ; and he could still detect traces of an over-ruling influence, that no doubt of Bute or the King himself. The reference to age in a man under sixty had that histrionic touch which so often marred the greatness of Pitt; and it showed a strange lack of practical discernment not to see that he needed allies, and that to discredit the Rockingham Whigs was to forfeit his one possible alliance. Half-hearted though his aid was, it sufficed to enable the Ministry to carry the repeal of the Stamp Act (February 22). Far, however, from abandoning the general principle of a right to tax the colonies, they passed a Declaratory Act affirming that right. The wisdom of this step has been a matter of no little discussion. On the one hand it was said that by this measure the boon of repeal was stripped of half its value. On the other hand it might be urged that the action of the colonies had made it impossible to ignore the question, and that to refrain from making any such declaration was virtually to abandon wholly the right at any time to tax the colonies. Future events showed that such an abandonment would have been the wiser policy. But if the Ministry are to be blamed for want of foresight, the blame must be shared by almost every responsible politician of that day. One noteworthy feature of the debate was that Franklin was called to the bar of the House of Commons and examined as an expert on colonial politics. That showed a desire to understand and propitiate American opinion which was an entirely new feature in colonial admini- stration. Franklin averred that the recognised doctrine among the colonists was that the mother-country had a right to control trade and to impose such duties as might be necessary for that purpose. What they denied, according to him, was the right to levy internal taxation. He did not however contend, as did some advocates of the colonial cause, that this was a necessary distinction, based on some immutable law of natural rights. Questions were addressed to Franklin with the object of obtaining
