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." The resolution was taken in America as well as in England. "If every one was of my opinion," wrote Washington in the month of February, 1775, "the English ministers would learn in a few words to what we wish to come. I would proclaim simply and without circumlocution our grievances and our resolve to obtain their redress. {282} I would tell them that we have long and ardently desired an honorable reconciliation, and that it has been refused us. I would add that we have comported ourselves as faithful subjects, that the spirit of liberty is too powerful in our hearts to permit us ever to submit to slavery, and that we are firmly decided to break every bond with an unjust and unnatural government, if our serfdom alone can satisfy a tyrant and his devilish ministry; and I would say all that to them in no covert terms, but with expressions as clear as the sun's light at full noon."