OLIYEB GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1765. of general warrants and the ignoble persecution of Wilkes,
sr. the first attempt was made upon America which roused her to
rebellion. In the autumn of that year, all her towns and
cities were in loud and vehement protest; and before the
year closed, Benjamin Franklin had placed in Grenville's
hands a solemn protest of resistance on the part of his
fellow colonists to any proposition to tax them without their
consent. But as yet, this met with little sympathy in
England; and to the stubborn nature of Grenville, fear was as
strange as wisdom. With only one division in the Commons,
when the attendance was most paltry, and without a single
negative in the Lords, he passed, at the opening of the present
year, the act which virtually created the Republic of America.
Burke was in the gallery of the house during its progress
(it had been his habit for some months to attend almost
every discussion), and said, nine years afterwards, that, far
from anything inflammatory, he had never in his life heard
so languid a debate.* Horace TValpole described it to Lord
Hertford as a " slight day on the American taxes." Barru,
who had served in America and knew the temper of the
people, was the only man whose language approached to the
occasion ; and as he had lately lost his regiment for his vote
against general warrants, it was laughed at as the language
of a disappointed man. Pitt was absent. On occasions less
momentous he had come to the house on crutches, swathed
in flannel; yet now he was absent. He afterwards prayed
that some friendly hand could have laid him prostrate on the
floor of the house to bear his testimony against the bill; but
it is doubtful if the desire to see Grenville more completely
* Works (ed. 1845), i. 477. In the same speech he made his ill-considered
attack on Dean Tucker, the only man of that day who thoroughly anticipated the
judgment and experience of our own on the great question of the American
Colonies.