I state, Sir, these particulars, because this act of spirit and fortitude has lately been, in the circulation of the season, and in some hazarded declamations in this House, attributed to timidity.  If, Sir, the conduct of ministry, in proposing the repeal, had arisen from timidity with regard to themselves, it would have been greatly to be condemned.  Interested timidity disgraces as much in the cabinet as personal timidity does in the field.  But timidity with regard to the well-being of our country is heroic virtue.  The noble lord who then conducted affairs, and his worthy colleagues, whilst they trembled at the prospect of such distresses as you have since brought upon yourselves, were not afraid steadily to look in the face that glaring and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have blenched.  He looked in the face one of the ablest, and, let me say, not the most scrupulous oppositions, that perhaps ever was in this House; and withstood it, unaided by even one of the usual supports of administration.  He did this, when he repealed the Stamp Act.  He looked in the face a person he had long respected and regarded, and whose aid was then particularly wanting:  I mean Lord Chatham.  He did this when he passed the Declaratory Act.

It is now given out, for the usual purposes, by the usual emissaries, that Lord Rockingham did not consent to the repeal of this act until he was bullied into it by Lord Chatham; and the reporters have gone so far as publicly to assert, in an hundred companies, that the honorable gentleman under the gallery,[8] who proposed the repeal in the American committee, had another set of resolutions in his pocket, directly the reverse of those he moved.  These artifices of a desperate cause are at this time spread abroad, with incredible care, in every part of the town, from the highest to the lowest companies; as if the industry of the circulation were to make amends for the absurdity of the report.

Sir, whether the noble lord is of a complexion to be bullied by Lord Chatham, or by any man, I must submit to those who know him.  I confess, when I look back to that time, I consider him as placed in one of the most trying situations in which, perhaps, any man ever stood.  In the House of Peers there were very few of the ministry, out of the noble lord’s own particular connection, (except Lord Egmont, who acted, as far as I could discern, an honorable and manly part,) that did not look to some other future arrangement, which warped his politics.  There were in both Houses new and menacing appearances, that might very naturally drive any other than a most resolute minister from his measure or from his station.  The household troops openly revolted.  The allies of ministry (those, I mean, who supported some of their measures, but refused responsibility for any) endeavored to undermine their credit, and to take ground that must be fatal to the success of the very cause which they would be thought to countenance.