"Very little that is satisfactory has transpired of America. On Monday Lord North moved for leave to bring in a Bill to remove the Customs and Courts of Justice from Boston to New Salem--a step so detrimental to the former town, as must soon reduce it to your own terms; and yet of so mild an appearance that it was agreed to without a division and almost without a debate," Gibbon wrote on March 16, 1774. The truth is, outside a small body of active politicians, Englishmen had not yet realized that the American question had become so acute, that close at hand was the end of peaceful negotiations. Even when it seemed probable that hostilities must ensue, the landed gentry, the backbone of the House of Commons, were in favour of thrashing their impenitent brethren across the sea, and a little later, according to Burke, "The merchants began to snuff the cadaverous _haut goût_ of lucrative war; the freighting business never was so lively, on account of the prodigious taking up for transport service: great orders for provisions of all kinds, new clothing for the troops, puts life into the woollen manufactures."[163] [163] "I am grieved to observe that the landed interest is almost altogether anti-American, though the common people hold the war in abhorrence, and the merchants and tradesmen, for obvious reasons, are likewise against it."--Lord Camden to Lord Chatham, February, 1775. Even the general body of the public was deluded, by the specious arguments of the ministers, into the support of the appeal to arms. "I recollect," Nicholls has recorded, "in one debate, Lord North stated that the inhabitants of Great Britain, considered collectively, paid one man with another twenty-five shillings a year in taxes; while the inhabitants of our American colonies, considered collectively, paid each only sixpence a year in taxes; he added, 'Is this equitable?' The country gentlemen were weak enough to believe that, by persevering in the contest, their taxes would be diminished."[164] [164] _Recollections and Reflections._ The Boston Port Act was the last straw. The Americans realized that they must either submit unconditionally to the home government or take arms in defence of their liberties. They did not long hesitate. In September the inter-provincial Congress approved the opposition of the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay to the execution of the late Acts of Parliament, and stated that if the same should be attempted to be carried into execution by force, in such cases all Americans ought to support them in their opposition. "I am not sorry that the line of conduct seems now chalked out," wrote the King on hearing the news. "The New England government are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent."[165] [165] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._