Here was certainly a disturbance preceding the repeal,--such a disturbance as Mr. Grenville thought necessary to qualify by the name of an _insurrection_, and the epithet of a _rebellious_ force: terms much stronger than any by which those who then supported his motion have ever since thought proper to distinguish the subsequent disturbances in America. They were disturbances which seemed to him and his friends to justify as strong a promise of support as hath been usual to give in the beginning of a war with the most powerful and declared enemies. When the accounts of the American governors came before the House, they appeared stronger even than the warmth of public imagination had painted them: so much stronger, that the papers on your table bear me out in saying that all the late disturbances, which have been at one time the minister's motives for the repeal of five out of six of the new court taxes, and are now his pretences for refusing to repeal that sixth, did not amount--why do I compare them?--no, not to a tenth part of the tumults and violence which prevailed long before the repeal of that act. Ministry cannot refuse the authority of the commander-in-chief, General Gage, who, in his letter of the 4th of November, from New York, thus represents the state of things:-- "It is difficult to say, from the _highest to the lowest_, who has not been _accessory_ to this _insurrection_, either by writing, or _mutual agreements_ to oppose the act, by what they are pleased to term all legal opposition to it. Nothing effectual has been proposed, either to prevent or quell the tumult. _The rest of the provinces are in the same situation_, as to a positive refusal to take the stamps, and threatening those who shall take them _to plunder and murder them_; and this affair stands _in all the provinces_, that, unless the act from its own nature enforce itself, nothing but a _very_ considerable military force can do it."