Founding the repeal on this basis, it was judged proper to lay before Parliament the whole detail of the American affairs, as fully as it had been laid before the ministry themselves.  Ignorance of those affairs had misled Parliament.  Knowledge alone could bring it into the right road.  Every paper of office was laid upon the table of the two Houses; every denomination of men, either of America, or connected with it by office, by residence, by commerce, by interest, even by injury; men of civil and military capacity, officers of the revenue, merchants, manufacturers of every species, and from every town in England, attended at the bar.  Such evidence never was laid before Parliament.  If an emulation arose among the ministers and members of Parliament, as the author rightly observes,[92] for the repeal of this act, as well as for the other regulations, it was not on the confident assertions, the airy speculations, or the vain promises of ministers, that it arose.  It was the sense of Parliament on the evidence before them.  No one so much as suspects that ministerial allurements or terrors had any share in it.

Our author is very much displeased, that so much credit was given to the testimony of merchants.  He has a habit of railing at them:  and he may, if he pleases, indulge himself in it.  It will not do great mischief to that respectable set of men.  The substance of their testimony was, that their debts in America were very great:  that the Americans declined to pay them, or to renew their orders, whilst this act continued:  that, under these circumstances, they despaired of the recovery of their debts, or the renewal of their trade in that country:  that they apprehended a general failure of mercantile credit.  The manufacturers deposed to the same general purpose, with this addition, that many of them had discharged several of their artificers; and, if the law and the resistance to it should continue, must dismiss them all.

This testimony is treated with great contempt by our author.  It must be, I suppose, because it was contradicted by the plain nature of things.  Suppose then that the merchants had, to gratify this author, given a contrary evidence; and had deposed, that while America remained in a state of resistance, whilst four million of debt remained unpaid, whilst the course of justice was suspended for want of stamped paper, so that no debt could be recovered, whilst there was a total stop to trade, because every ship was subject to seizure for want of stamped clearances, and while the colonies were to be declared in rebellion, and subdued by armed force, that in these circumstances they would still continue to trade cheerfully and fearlessly as before:  would not such witnesses provoke universal indignation for their folly or their wickedness, and be deservedly hooted from the bar:[93] would any human faith have given credit to such assertions?  The testimony of the merchants was necessary for the detail, and to bring the matter home to the feeling of the House; as to the general reasons, they spoke abundantly for themselves.