March 4th was fixed for passing the declaratory Bill of Right, and the Repeal. Mr. Pitt objected again to the first, and avowed his opinion that the Parliament had no right of taxing North America while unrepresented. “He had heard,” he said, “that this opinion had been treated in his absence as nonsense, as the child of ignorance, as the language of a foreigner who knew nothing of the Constitution. Yet the common law was his guide; it was civil law that was the foreigner.” To this he added severe reflections on Dr. Hay, the person he alluded to, for having adopted arbitrary notions from the civil law. “For himself, he was sorry to have been treated as an overheated enthusiastic leveller, yet he had served the highest and best Prince in Christendom, and the most valiant and brave nation, and never would change his opinions till the day of his death. If he was one of the weakest men in the kingdom, at least he was one of the soberest;[248] had no animosities, no pursuits; he wished to live and die a dutiful subject, and to see such an Administration as the King should like, and the people approve. Wales had never been taxed till represented; nor did he contend for more than had been given up to Ireland in the reign of King William.” He quoted one or two authors; said he was a solitary, unconversing man, and not a very reading man neither; but he loved old books and old friends; and though his books and his opinions might be nonsensical, he should still adhere to them; and declared he never gave his dissent with more dislike to a question than he now gave it at present.” Dr. Hay excused himself, and pleaded having been misrepresented; and then he and Rigby argued for the repeal, if it must pass, without the declaratory law. Mr. Pitt moved to leave out the words _in all cases whatsoever_; and the debate turned chiefly on the resemblance or non-resemblance of Ireland to America, in the privileges enjoyed by the former. The amendment was rejected, and the bill passed.[249] The Bill for Repeal was then read for the last time, and eagerly and obstinately combated by Grenville and his party. Bamber Gascoyne produced a letter written to Liverpool, by Sir William Meredith, in which the latter had said to the Mayor, “Lord Bute’s friends, Mr. Grenville’s party and the rank Tories, voted for this bloody question; and considering we had been beaten twice in the House of Lords, we were surprised to find our numbers were 275 to 167; I hope soon to send you word of the repeal. P. S.--Mr. Pitt will soon be at the head of affairs.”