When the American question was brought up in the autumn session of Parliament, it was treated in the manner with which the Americans had by this time become familiar. A few far-sighted men still urged the reasonableness of the American claims, but there was now a great majority against them. In spite of grave warning voices, both houses decided to support the king; and in this they were upheld by the university of Oxford, which a century ago had burned the works of John Milton as "blasphemous," and which now, with equal felicity, in a formal address to the king, described the Americans as "a people who had forfeited their lives and their fortunes to the justice of the state." At the same time the department of American affairs was taken from the amiable Lord Dartmouth, and given to the truculent Lord George Germain. These things were done in November, 1775, and in the preceding month they had been heralded by an act of wanton barbarity on the part of a British naval officer, albeit an unwarranted act, which the British government as promptly as possible disowned. On the 16th of October, Captain Mowatt had sailed with four small vessels into the harbour of Portland (then called Falmouth), and with shells and grenades set fire to the little town. St. Paul's Church, all the public buildings, and three fourths of all the dwellings were burned to the ground, and a thousand unoffending men, women, and children were thus turned out-of-doors just as the sharp Maine winter was coming on to starve and freeze them. The news of the burning of Portland reached Philadelphia on the same day (October 31) with the news that George III. was about to send foreign mercenaries to fight against his American subjects; and now the wrath of Congress was thoroughly kindled, and the party which advised further temporizing was thrown into helpless minority. [Illustration: A CONTEMPORARY SKETCH OF THE BURNING OF FALMOUTH] [Sidenote: Effects upon Congress] "Well, brother rebel," said a Southern member to Samuel Ward of Rhode Island, "we have now got a sufficient answer to our petition: I want nothing more, but am ready to declare ourselves independent." Congress now advised New Hampshire, Virginia, and South Carolina to frame for themselves new republican governments, as Massachusetts had already done; it urged South Carolina to seize the British vessels in her waters; it appointed a committee to correspond with foreign powers; and above all, it adopted unreservedly the scheme, already partially carried into operation, for the expulsion of the British from Canada. [Portrait: Guy Carleton] [Portrait: Rich^d. Montgomery] [Sidenote: The Americans invade Canada, Sept., 1775]