So little was the change known in America, that the letters of your governors, giving an account of these disturbances long after they had arrived at their highest pitch, were all directed to the old ministry, and particularly to the Earl of Halifax, the Secretary of State corresponding with the colonies, without once in the smallest degree intimating the slightest suspicion of any ministerial revolution whatsoever.  The ministry was not changed in England until the 10th day of July, 1765.  On the 14th of the preceding June, Governor Fauquier, from Virginia, writes thus,—­and writes thus to the Earl of Halifax:—­“Government is set at defiance, not having strength enough in her hands to enforce obedience to the laws of the community.—­The private distress, which every man feels, increases the general dissatisfaction at the duties laid by the Stamp Act, which breaks out and shows itself upon every trifling occasion.”  The general dissatisfaction had produced some time before, that is, on the 29th of May, several strong public resolves against the Stamp Act; and those resolves are assigned by Governor Bernard as the cause of the insurrections in Massachusetts Bay, in his letter of the 15th of August, still addressed to the Earl of Halifax; and he continued to address such accounts to that minister quite to the 7th of September of the same year.  Similar accounts, and of as late a date, were sent from other governors, and all directed to Lord Halifax.  Not one of these letters indicates the slightest idea of a change, either known or even apprehended.

Thus are blown away the insect race of courtly falsehoods!  Thus perish the miserable inventions of the wretched runners for a wretched cause, which they have fly-blown into every weak and rotten part of the country, in vain hopes, that, when their maggots had taken wing, their importunate buzzing might sound something like the public voice!

Sir, I have troubled you sufficiently with the state of America before the repeal.  Now I turn to the honorable gentleman who so stoutly challenges us to tell whether, after the repeal, the provinces were quiet.  This is coming home to the point.  Here I meet him directly, and answer most readily, They were quiet.  And I, in my turn, challenge him to prove when, and where, and by whom, and in what numbers, and with what violence, the other laws of trade, as gentlemen assert, were violated in consequence of your concession, or that even your other revenue laws were attacked.  But I quit the vantage-ground on which I stand, and where I might leave the burden of the proof upon him:  I walk down upon the open plain, and undertake to show that they were not only quiet, but showed many unequivocal marks of acknowledgment and gratitude.  And to give him every advantage, I select the obnoxious colony of Massachusetts Bay, which at this time (but without hearing her) is so heavily a culprit before Parliament:  I will select their proceedings even under circumstances of no small irritation.  For, a little imprudently, I must say, Governor Bernard mixed in the administration of the lenitive of the repeal no small acrimony arising from matters of a separate nature.  Yet see, Sir, the effect of that lenitive, though mixed with these bitter ingredients,—­and how this rugged people can express themselves on a measure of concession.