George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[347]

Chapter 19:

America Annuls the Stamp Act—Rockingham's Adminis-Tration continued.

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October—December, 1765.

on the day on which the Congress consummated the

chap. XIX.} 1765. Oct.

Union, the Legislature which first proposed it, having been reassembled at Boston, and now cheered and invigorated by the presence of Samuel Adams, embodied in their reply to Bernard, the opinion on the power of parliament, from which the colony was never to recede.

‘Your Excellency tells us,’ they said,

that the province seems to be upon the brink of a precipice! To despair of the commonwealth is a certain presage of its fall. The representatives of the people are awake to the sense of its danger, and their utmost prudence will not be wanting to prevent its ruin.

Of the power of parliament, there undoubtedly are boundaries. The church, in the name of the Sacred Trinity, in the presence of king Henry the Third and the estates of the realm, solemnly denounced that most grievous sentence of excommunication against all those who should make statutes, or observe them, being made contrary to the liberties of Magna Charta.