t have
been a greater display of frantic national enthusiasm than that which
broke out when it was found that hostile clamor had prevailed against
the Minister, and that his excise scheme was abandoned.

Frederick the Great has enriched the curiosities of history with an
account which he gives of the abandonment of the Bill. According to
him, George the Second had devised the measure as a means of making
himself absolute sovereign of England. The Excise Bill was intended to
put him in possession of a revenue fixed and assured, a revenue large
enough to allow him to increase his military power to any strength he
pleased. It only needed a word of command and a chief for revolution
to break out. Walpole escaped from Parliament covered with an old
cloak, and shouting with all his might, "Liberty, liberty! no excise!"
Thus disguised, he managed to get to the King in St. James's Palace.
He found the King preparing for the worst, arming himself at all
points, having put on the hat he wore at Malplaquet, and trying the
temper of the sword he carried at Oudenarde. George desired to put
himself at once at the head of his guards, and try conclusions with his
enemies. Walpole had all the trouble in the world to moderate his
sovereign's impetuosity, and at length represented to him, "with the
generous hardihood of an Englishman attached to his master," that it
was only a choice between abandoning the Excise Bill and losing the
crown. Whereupon George at last gave way; the Bill was abandoned, and
the crown preserved.

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[Sidenote: 1733--Romance and reality]

This scene is, of course, a piece of the purest romance. But it is
certain that the passions of the people were so thoroughly aroused that
a man less cool and in the true sense courageous than Walpole might
have provoked a popular outbreak, and no one can say whether the crown
of the Brunswicks might not have gone down in a popular outbreak just
then. Time and education have long since vindicated Walpole's
financial principles; but the passion, the ignorance, and the
partisanship of his own day were too strong, and prevailed against him.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

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INDEX.

Abernethy, Dr., death, iv. 282.
Act for better securing the Dependency of Ireland, i. 177.
Act of Settlement, i. 4.
Act of Union passed, iii. 327, 330.
Acts of Trade, iii. 82, 84, 86, 105.
Adams, John:
Conduct towards Colonel Preston, iii. 152.