orror
he expressed. There is "a very terrible affair impending," Pulteney
said, "a monstrous project--yea, more monstrous than has ever yet been
represented. It is such a project as has struck terror into the minds
of most gentlemen within this House, and into the minds of all men
without-doors who have any regard to the happiness or to the
constitution of their country. I mean that monster the excise; that
plan of arbitrary power which is expected to be laid before this House
in the present session of Parliament." Sir John Barnard, one of the
members for the City of London, a man of great respectability,
capacity, and influence, ventured to predict that Walpole's scheme
would "turn out to be his eternal shame and dishonor, and that the more
the project is examined, and the consequences thereof considered, the
more the projector will be hated and despised."

Of all this strong language Walpole took little account. {316} He
meant to propose his scheme, he said, when the proper time should come,
and he did not doubt but that honorable members would find it something
very different from the vague and monstrous project of which they had
been told. In any case he meant to propose it. [Sidenote:
1733--Walpole's scheme] Accordingly, on Wednesday, March 7, 1733,
Walpole moved that the House should on that day week resolve itself
into a committee "to consider of the most proper methods for the better
security and improvement of the duties and revenues already charged
upon and payable from tobacco and wines." On the day appointed,
Wednesday, March 14th, the House went into committee accordingly, and
Walpole expounded his scheme. It was simply a plan to deal with the
duties on wines and tobacco, and Walpole protested that his views and
purposes were confined altogether to these two branches of the revenue,
and that such a thing as a scheme for a general excise had never
entered into his head, "nor, for what I know, into the head of any man
I am acquainted with." There was in the mind of the English people
then a vague horror of all excise laws and excise officers, and the
whole opposition to Walpole's scheme in and out of the House of Commons
was maintained by an appeal to that common feeling. Walpole's
resolutions with regard to the tobacco trade were taken first and
separately. It will soon be seen that the resolutions concerning the
duties on wine were destined never to be discussed at all. What
Walpole proposed t