d a clamor of indignation that found a
ready echo in London. Pitt, Beckford, Lyttelton, Hardwicke, Temple,
all spoke against the proposed measure and {31} denounced its
injustice. George Grenville defended the bill.

[Sidenote: 1763--George Grenville's characteristics]

Grenville was one of those honorable and upright statesmen who do not
contrive to make either honor or rectitude seem lovable qualities. He
had first made himself conspicuous as one of the Boy Patriots who
rallied with Pitt against Walpole. His abilities ran with swiftness
along few and narrow channels. He was desperately well informed about
many things, and desperately in earnest about anything which he
undertook. Blessed or cursed with a solemnity that never was enlivened
by a gleam of humor, a ray of fancy, or a flash of eloquence, Grenville
regarded the House of Commons with the cold ferocity of a tyrannical
and pompous schoolmaster. A style of speech that would have made a
discourse upon Greek poetry seem arid and a dissertation upon Italian
painting colorless--if it were possible to conceive Grenville as
wasting time or thought on such trifles--added no grace to the
exposition of a fiscal measure or charm to the formality of a phalanx
of figures. He was gloomy, dogged, domineering, and small-minded. His
nearest approach to a high passion was his worship of economy; his
nearest approach to a splendid virtue was his stubborn independence.
He abandoned Pitt for Bute because he detested Pitt's prodigal policy,
but Bute was the more deceived if he fancied that he was to find in
Grenville the convenient mask that he had lost in Newcastle; and the
King himself had yet to learn how indifferent the dry, morose pedant
and preacher could be not merely to royal favor, but even to the
expression of royal opinion. It was truly said of him by the greatest
of his contemporaries that he seemed to have no delight out of the
House except in such things as in some way related to the business that
was to be done within it. The "undissipated and unwearied application"
which he devoted to everything that he undertook was now employed in
exasperating the country. The time was not yet ripe for it to be
employed in dismembering the empire.

In his support of the cider tax Grenville managed to {32} make it and
himself ridiculous at the same time. In his defence he kept asking,
over and over again, "Where will you find another tax? tell me where."
Pitt, who wa