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

[134]

Chapter 8:

The Treasury enter a Minute for an American Stamp tax—ministry of Grenville and Bedford.

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May—September, 1763.

The savage warfare was relentlessly raging when the

chap. VII.} 1763. May.

young statesman to whom the forms of office had referred the subject of the colonies, was devising plans for organizing governments in the newly acquired territories. Of an Irish family, and an Irish as well as an English peer, Shelburne naturally inclined to limit the legislative authority of the parliament of Great Britain over the outlying dominions of the crown. The world already gave him credit for great abilities; he had just been proposed to supersede Egremont in the department of state, and, except the lawyers who had been raised to the peerage, he was the best speaker in the House of Lords. For a moment the destinies of America hung upon his judgment.

For the eastern boundary of New England, Shel-

June

burne hesitated between the Penobscot and the St. Croix; on the north-east he adopted the crest of the water shed dividing the streams tributary to the St. Lawrence river from those flowing into the Bay of Fundy, or the Atlantic Ocean, or the Gulf of the St.