But the insuperable trouble was that, at the close of the last war and before the passage of the Stamp Act, the controversy upon the question of right had been unborn. Now, having come into being, this controversy could not be laid at rest by a mere waiver; it was of that nature that its resurrection would be sure and speedy. Anything else would have been, of course, the practical victory of the colonies and defeat of England; and the English could not admit that things had reached this pass as yet. If England should not renounce her right, the colonies would always remain uneasy beneath the unretracted assertion of it; if she should never again seek to exercise it, she would be really yielding. It was idle to talk of such a state of affairs; it could not be brought about, even if it were conceivable that each side could be induced to repeal all its acts and resolves touching the subject,--and even this preliminary step was what no reasonable man could anticipate. In a word, when Franklin longed for the restoration of the _status quo ante_ the Stamp Act, he longed for a chimera. A question had been raised, which was of that kind that it could not be compromised, or set aside, or ignored, or forgotten; it must be _settled_ by the recession or by the defeat of one contestant or the other. Nothing better than a brief period of restless and suspicious truce could be gained by an effort to restore the situation of a previous date, even were such restoration possible, since the intervening period and the memory of its undetermined dispute concerning a principle could not be annihilated.