hile the jack-boot (a pun upon
his name) and the petticoat, by which the princess was represented, were
continually being burnt by the mob or hanged upon the gallows. On the 9th
of November, while proceeding to the Guildhall, he narrowly escaped falling
into the hands of the populace, who smashed his coach, and he was treated
with studied coldness at the banquet. In January 1762 Bute was compelled to
declare war against Spain, though now without the advantages which the
earlier decision urged by Pitt could have secured, and he supported the
war, but with no zeal and no definite aim beyond the obtaining of a peace
at any price and as soon as possible. In May he succeeded the duke of
Newcastle as first lord of the treasury, and he was created K.G. after
resigning the order of the Thistle. In his blind eagerness for peace he
conducted on his own responsibility secret negotiations for peace with
France through Viri, the Sardinian minister, and the preliminary treaty was
signed on the 3rd of November at Fontainebleau. The king of Prussia had
some reason to complain of the sudden desertion of his ally, but there is
no evidence whatever to substantiate his accusation that Bute had
endeavoured to divert the tsar later from his alliance with Prussia, or
that he had treacherously in his negotiations with Vienna held out to that
court hopes of territorial compensation in Silesia as the price of the
abandonment of France; while the charge brought against Bute in 1765 of
having taken bribes to conclude the peace, subsequently after investigation
pronounced frivolous by parliament, may safely be ignored. A parliamentary
majority was now secured for the minister's policy by bribery and threats,
and with the aid of Henry Fox, who deserted his party to become leader of
the Commons. The definitive peace of Paris was signed on the 10th of
February 1763, and a wholesale proscription of the Whigs was begun, the
most insignificant adherents of the fallen party, including widows, menial
servants and schoolboys, incurring the minister's mean vengeance. Later,
Bute roused further hostility by his cider tax, an ill-advised measure
producing only L75,000 a year, imposing special burdens upon the farmers
and landed interest in the cider counties, and extremely unpopular because
extending the detested system of taxation by excise, regarded as an
infringement of the popular liberties. At length, unable to contend any
longer against the general and inve