The Bill for Repeal was then read for the last time, and eagerly and obstinately combated by Grenville and his party. Bamber Gascoyne produced a letter written to Liverpool, by Sir William Meredith, in which the latter had said to the Mayor, “Lord Bute’s friends, Mr. Grenville’s party and the rank Tories, voted for this bloody question; and considering we had been beaten twice in the House of Lords, we were surprised to find our numbers were 275 to 167; I hope soon to send you word of the repeal. P. S.--Mr. Pitt will soon be at the head of affairs.”
Pitt rose and said, He had heard somewhere, no matter where--a bird in the air had told him--of a meeting that had lately been held (between Bute, Bedford, and Grenville) of which he could not learn the particulars; but had heard that at that meeting the noble Lord (Bute) behaved like himself and like a nobleman. It was a name which had been much bandied about in a way it did not deserve. “I am inflexibly bent,” continued he, “to resist his return to power; but how could that prophet (Sir W. Meredith) imagine a thing so improbable as that I should be at the head, when I am so extremely at the tail of affairs, as I am now, with five friends in the other House, and four in this? In the order and class of salutary and preventive things, I never felt greater satisfaction than in giving my vote for this repeal. You could not subsist and be a people with that defalcation of imports. America is over-glutted with nothing but the Stamp Act. Nothing but a disposition to heal and strengthen the Government can make you a people. I have my doubts if there would have been a Minister to be found who would have dared to have dipped the royal ermines in the blood of the Americans. This country, like a fine horse, to use a beautiful expression of Job, whose neck is clothed in thunder, if you soothe and stroke it, you may do anything; but if an unskilful rider takes it in hand, he will find that, though not vicious, yet it has tricks. I repeat it, I never had greater satisfaction than in the repeal of this Act.”
This speech gave great offence to Grenville, who replied, “Let his bird have told him what it would, yet, in justice to the noble Lord (Bute), he would declare that it was impossible to behave better than he had done; but why was that meeting mentioned? to what end? He had heard a bird speak, too, of a meeting, or meetings, on other occasions. But the gentleman had doubted whether a Minister would have been found to dip the royal ermines in blood;--no, sir, not dip the royal ermines in blood; but I am one who declare, if the tax was to be laid again, I would do it; and I would do it now if I had to choose; since he has exerted all his eloquence so dangerously against it, it becomes doubly necessary. It is necessary from the increase of the debt in the late war; he knows I was against the enormous expense of the German war. Are all those boasted triumphs shrunk to the meanness of supporting such a measure as this? I envy not the popularity; let him have the bonfire; I rejoice in the hiss. Was it to do again, I would do it.”