And Sir Robert, “looking at all the papers before the House, could not say that there was here any vindication for bringing forward this transcendental power.”  He asked whether “they had ever treated with so much severity a conquered colony amid the first heat of animosity after the contest.”  And he traced the history of our government of the island back to the time of Charles II., pointing out (as Burke had formerly argued with respect to our Colonies in North America) that “Jamaica owed its colonization by British subjects to the conquest that was made of it by the arms of Cromwell; that its first English population was composed of those who, disgusted with the excesses of the civil wars, there found a refuge,” and who had carried with them that attachment to liberty which, as early as 1678, had led them successfully to repel the attacks made on the privileges of their House of Assembly by the ministers of Charles II.  He warned the House, also, that if this measure were passed, “a sympathy for the people of Jamaica would be excited throughout the other West Indian possessions of the crown.”  And, while fully admitting that the conduct of the Assembly had been “foolish and unjustifiable,” he still recommended that it should be treated in a conciliatory spirit, which as yet had not been shown toward it.

The government carried their proposal by a majority of no more than five in a very full house, a success which they regarded as a defeat, and, as has been already mentioned, resigned.  But as the state of the question and of the island did not admit of delay, on their resumption of their offices they introduced a fresh measure, which the Conservatives again curtailed of its most severe clauses, and which, in the form in which it was eventually passed, gave the Assembly time to reconsider its conduct, and, without the humiliation of confessing itself guilty, to give a practical recantation of their offensive resolutions, by resuming its work of legislation, any farther delay of which would on many subjects be very mischievous to the island itself.  The distinct assertion by both parties of the power of the Parliament to inflict even the severest penalty enabled the Houses to take this conciliatory course without loss of dignity; while the stern disapproval of the conduct of the Assembly which the Conservative leader had expressed, even when pleading for a milder treatment of it, convinced the colonists that any protracted contumacy would be dangerous, and would deprive them for the future of all title to even the modified protection which on this occasion had saved them.