In the light of easing and improving an overburthened country and revenue, he was not blameable in wishing it could be accomplished. Nor, considering how great a debt had been incurred by supporting the colonies in the last war, was it unreasonable to desire that they should assist their mother in contributing to lighten a burthen become almost too grievous to be supported. But to this single object were all Grenville’s views and knowledge confined. His policy by no means embraced impediments or consequences. To say that his plan would be confined to the present assistance as then chalked out, was what neither himself pretended, nor was it by any means adequate to the mischiefs the attempt might produce. He himself termed it but an experiment towards farther aid, and as such the Americans immediately understood it. Little did he weigh the danger of a contest between the mother-country and such distant, extensive, and now powerful subjects. Less did he attend to the opportunity he threw into the hands of Spain and France, of exciting a mutinous spirit in our colonies, and when occasion should serve, of throwing assistance into them against their parent. Least of all did he foresee the damage he would inflict on trade, and how far the expected aid would be from compensating the loss the British merchant would suffer by a quarrel with our outlying brethren; but it was the fate of the times I am now describing,--I mean during the administrations of Lord Bute and Grenville,--to stir questions which, for the happiness of the whole, had better have slept in oblivion. The Americans soon learned to enter upon and discuss those problems of government, the benefits of which happy nations had better enjoy than agitate; which, from the perversity of man, are never universally assented to, and consequently cannot be moved without mischief; and which wisdom will never recal from speculation into dispute, but when the afflictive hand of power makes opposition to them the only remedy left against tyranny and arbitrary will.