retention to be accordingly as much a Colonial as an English charge. It was under these circumstances that Charles Townshend, when President of the Board of Trade for one month in 1763, inspired by the example and traditions of Halifax, and with stanch supporters in Mansfield and Grenville, resolved to tax the colonies by authority of Parliament, and devised an elaborate scheme for that effect. But time and the forms of the House of Commons were against him, and on the 29th March 1763 the Bill was for the moment abandoned. A few weeks more and Charles Townshend himself had left the scene of his mischievous activity, not however before he had helped Grenville to pass a measure extending and making clear the powers of the Courts of Admiralty under the Navigation Acts, and had decided that the tenure of the Chief Justice of New York which had hitherto been quam diu se bene gesserit, should be at the royal pleasure, and that a standing army of twenty regiments should be sent to America, the pay of which was to be defrayed for one year out of English revenue and afterwards from colonial sources regiments, the presence of which would be beneficial or dangerous exactly as they were used, either to defend the frontiers against the Indians, or to overawe the settlers in their homes. The fact that the white population of Canada was French in race and Roman Catholic in religion, with the exception of a very small minority, constituted a further and serious difficulty.
Such were the legacies which Shelburne found left to him by his predecessors when he received the despatch of the 5th May from Egremont, calling his attention to the new possessions of England in America and the questions to which their acquisition gave rise, but assuming the policy previously settled by Grenville and Townshend to be substantially sound.
The letter of the Board in reply gave scant encouragement to the schemes of Townshend and Grenville.[1] After
- ↑ Reply of the Board of Trade, June 8th, 1763. Observations by Governor Pownall, June 1763; Observations by Lord Shelburne, May 1763.
