1 85 large, the decided approbation of the parliament BOOK seemed to ensure the permanency of the mini cution, un attachement inflexible à ses opinions, parcequ'il les croyoit avantageuses à sa patrie, qu'il aimoit. L'autre c'étoit Bute; il avoit été gouverneur du Roi. Plus ambitieux qu'habile, il vouloit dominer à l'ombre de l'autorité souveraine." After Mr. Pitt, finding the absolute ascendant acquired by his antagonist, had retired from court, to use the expression of the royal historian, " plein d'indignation," the minister Bute not only refused to renew the subsidy, but actually made propositions to the emperor Peter the Third, through the medium of prince Gallitzin, to prevent his concluding a separate peace with Prussia. The emperor sent a copy of prince Gallitzin's dispatch to the king of Prussia, in order that he might be apprised of the treachery of the English court. Lord Bute also made secret advances to the court of Vienna, offering very liberally the spoils of Prussia to the empress queen, in case she was disposed to come to an accommodation; but prince Kaunitz, in the name of the empress, declared, "that she would accept of no peace of which England was the mediatrix." The English minister had, as the king of Prussia affirms, no scruple to permit France to keep possession of the countries of Cleves, Wesel, and Gueldres, though it was at length agreed that they should be evacuated; after which, as lord Bute hesitated not to express himself in the house of peers, "they were to be scrambled for." And on the signing of the preliminaries, large bodies of Austrians and Prussians were actually beginning their march to the Westphalian frontier, in order to dispute the possession. But France, alarmed at the idea of a war in the Low Countries, thought proper to assent to the restoration of these territories, on condition that Prussia should agree to XIII. 1762. BOOK ster's power; and the real intrinsic merits of the XIII. treaty, with the beneficial consequences neces1762. sarily resulting from the restoration of peace, might reasonably be supposed gradually to conciliate the minds of the public. But other causes of dissatisfaction soon arose, which heightened almost to phrenzy the popular odium against the minister and the court, and converted the national ebullitions of discontent into a tempest of faction, which most alarmingly agitated, and in the progress of its fury, seemed at one period to threaten scarcely less than the absolute wreck and destruction of the political vessel *. sign a treaty of neutrality for the Netherlands, But, before this neutrality could take effect, the treaty of Hubertsburg was concluded. The change of ministers and councils which took place at the accession of the present king, excited scarcely less astonishment abroad than the dismission of the famous whig administration of queen Anne half a century before.Vide Ouvres du Roi de Prusse, * In comparing the brilliant and auspicious commencement of the reign of the present monarch with the dark and dreadful scenes which ensued (and, it is painful to add, with those which at a much more advanced period seem yet impending), the imagination is led forcibly to advert to the sublime symbolical representations introduced by a poet of the highest order, Mr. Gray, into his celebrated ode of The Bard, in allusion to the catastrophe terminating the reign of Richard II. in the splendor of its opening dawn, and its subsequent fatal indiscretions, bearing no very distant analogy to the present. In the course of the session it was found ne- BOOK XIII. cessary, the increasing expence of the war having left an immense arrear of debt, to negotiate 1762. a new loan to a very large amount; for discharging the interest of which, amongst other taxes, a duty was moved by the chancellor of the exchequer, of four shillings upon every hogshead of Cider tax. cider, to be paid by the maker, and with certain qualifications subjected to all the laws of excise. No sooner was this most unpopular, and therefore most imprudent, proposition brought forward, than the opposition, eager and joyful to embrace so inviting an opportunity of attack, opened all their batteries against it. Certain of the support and concurrence of the nation at large, they inveighed with great plausibility and vehemence against this extension of a system reprobated as oppressive, arbitrary, and odious. The arguments by which the nation had been so much inflamed thirty years before, at the period when sir Robert Walpole attempted to carry into effect his famous project, were now revived, and anew enforced. "Under this act," Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows; BOOK said a patriotic member of the house of comXIII. mons, Mr. Hartley, "the exciseman is to be 1762. armed with unlimited powers of research from the barn without to the closet within; with an alternative offered to each person thus visited, of escaping all this vexation upon a certain composition for the duty. Now because there is an alternative offered, this is said to be a law formed upon the principles of liberty: for no man is forced under this excise. The law only compels him, under intolerable pains and penalties, to a voluntary payment. I wish some clearsighted man would explain to me the difference between these two cases: the ministry send me notice that I shall have a troop of excisemen or a troop of horse, no matter which, quartered upon me; and in a postscript they subjoin, that a troop of horse is but, as the gentlemen of the long robe say, a fiction in law; and if I will pay the sum specified per head for my family, I shall hear no more of the excisemen or the troop of horse-till the next time." The clamor against the cider bill became loud and general; and the city of London presented, at the bar of the house of commons, a petition against it. The bill, nevertheless, passed both houses by considerable majorities, though in the house of lords 43 peers divided, and two protests were signed against it. When it lay ready for the royal sanction, the city of XIII. London, rather to express its detestation of the BOOK bill than from any hope of success, petitioned the crown to refuse its assent. In the cider 1762. counties the abhorrence of the measure was so general, that it was found very difficult to carry the act into execution; and it appears indeed to have been liable to objections not applicable to other branches of the excise revenue. Still, however, it cannot be justly doubted, that the duties of excise, levied on the proper objects, and guarded from abuse by just and equitable regulations, constitute incomparably the fairest, the easiest, the most productive of all the various modes of national taxation. But a wise government will and ought to consult the general temper and disposition of the people in all the measures of government, and more especially in the manner of raising the national supplies. For when a specific revenue is to be exacted by the supreme authority of the state, it is surely no excessive indulgence to permit them to pay it in the manner most agreeable, though in reality least advantageous to themselves. All that the wisdom and beneficence of government united can do in such a case is, to introduce by gradual and insensible steps the amelioration of any actually existing system, however clearly perceived to be absurd and pernicious. In the present instance, though the |