In January Parliament met, and on the 14th the subject was brought before the House. There was a great debate. Burke then made his maiden speech, and was followed by Pitt, who had not yet expressed his views, and had indeed absented himself from the House for a year. Expectation was raised to the highest pitch, and in a magnificent speech he declared, what till that moment had in England been scarcely thought of, that Parliament had _no right_ to tax the colonies, for taxation and representation went hand in hand. He however, like the Americans, drew a line between taxation and customs. Customs he regarded in the light of trade regulations, and therefore in the hands of the Imperial Legislature. After a speech of weak acquiescence from Conway, Grenville made an able reply; he exposed the fallacy of distinguishing between taxes and duties, alleged many instances of the taxation of unrepresented bodies, and charged the Americans with ingratitude for declining to pay for a war so entirely in their own interest as the last. Pitt, though he had spoken, was, contrary to the rules of the House, called upon by the general voice to speak again. He rose, and declared himself ready to answer Grenville on every point. His reply was such as a statesman must make to a lawyer. "I rejoice," he cried, "that America has resisted; three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves would have been fit instruments to have made slaves of the rest." He had not come down with the "statute book doubled down in dog's ears to defend the cause of liberty," and as to gratitude, he supposed that all the bounties to America were for English purposes. There was a trade with America of £3,000,000 a year, and it was trade which carried England through the last war. "This you owe to America, and shall a miserable financier come with a boast that he can fetch a peppercorn into the Exchequer to the loss of millions to the nation?" He closed by stating his belief that England could crush America to atoms, but the triumph would be hazardous. If she fell she would fall like the strong man; she would embrace the pillars of the State, and pull down the Constitution with her. He advised the immediate and entire repeal of the Stamp Act, but that the other rights of Parliament, apart from taxation, should be clearly declared. There was no doubt much weight in Grenville's instances of imperfect representation, but they were not wisely urged against Pitt, who in his first speech had himself pointed out in very trenchant words the wretched state of the representative system in England. Indeed, he almost alone seems to have understood the real meaning of the Wilkes riots, and to have wished to bring Parliament and the people into harmony. Pitt's bold speech encouraged the ministers to act, and after a long examination of witnesses, among whom Franklin, who had come over as an agent to oppose the Act, was the most important, the