On the day after the battle of Bunker's Hill, and as a last effort of fidelity towards the metropolis. Congress had voted (July 1, 1775) a second petition to the king, which was called the Olive Branch, and which Richard Penn was charged with conveying to England. A numerous and considerable faction in the American assemblies were strongly in favor of loyal union with the mother-country. "Gentlemen," Mr. Dickinson, deputy from Pennsylvania, had recently said, "in the reading of the project of a solemn declaration, justifying the taking up of arms, there is only a single word of which I disapprove, and it is that of _Congress_." "And for my part, Mr. President," said Mr. Harrison, rising, "there is in this paper only a single word of which I approve, and it is the word _Congress_."
The petition of the thirteen united colonies received no answer. At the opening of the session on the 25th of October, 1775, the king's speech was clearly menacing. The Duke of Grafton had tendered his resignation as keeper of the privy seal. "I ventured to communicate our apprehensions to the king," wrote he in his _Memoirs_. "I added that the ministers, themselves in error, were drawing his Majesty into it. The king deigned to expatiate on his projects, and informed me that a numerous body of German troops was going to be united to our forces. He appeared astonished when I replied that his Majesty would perceive too late that the doubling of these troops would only increase the humiliation without attaining the proposed end." Lord George Sackville, who had become Lord George Germaine, had been charged with the direction of American affairs. He was haughty and violent. Public sentiment, strongly excited by the taking up of arms by the Americans, began to express itself in addresses and loyal declarations. George III., his ministers and his people marched together against the rebellion of the colonies. Alone and for various reasons the Whig opposition in Parliament struggled against the rising tide of national irritation. The Prohibition bill had just been voted, interdicting all commerce with the thirteen revolted colonies, and authorizing the capture of vessels or merchandise which belonged to Americans, and should become the property of the conquerors. The arguments were as violent as the measures. The chancellor, Lord Mansfield, distinguished among all the judges, recalled the sentence of the great Gustavus to his troops during the German campaign: "My boys, you see those men down there: if you do not kill them, they will kill you."