is
hand. The bearers set him down within the bar. His friends instantly
surrounded him, and with their help he crawled to his seat near the
table. In this condition he spoke three hours and a half against the
peace. During that time he was repeatedly forced to sit down and to use
cordials. It may well be supposed that his voice was faint, that his
action was languid, and that his speech, though occasionally brilliant
and impressive, was feeble when compared with his best oratorical
performances. But those who remembered what he had done, and who saw
what he suffered, listened to him with emotion stronger than any that
mere eloquence can produce. He was unable to stay for the division, and
was carried away from the House amidst shouts as loud as those which had
announced his arrival.

A large majority approved the peace. The exultation of the court was
boundless. "Now," exclaimed the Princess Mother, "my son is really
King!" The young sovereign spoke of himself as freed from the bondage in
which his grandfather had been held. On one point, it was announced, his
mind was unalterably made up. Under no circumstances whatever should
those Whig grandees, who had enslaved his predecessors and endeavored to
enslave himself, be restored to power.

This vaunting was premature. The real strength of the favorite was by no
means proportioned to the number of votes which he had, on one
particular division, been able to command. He was soon again in
difficulties. The most important part of his budget was a tax on cider.
This measure was opposed, not only by those who were generally hostile
to his administration, but also by many of his supporters. The name of
excise had always been hateful to the Tories. One of the chief crimes of
Walpole, in their eyes, had been his partiality for this mode of raising
money. The Tory Johnson had in his Dictionary given so scurrilous a
definition of the word Excise, that the Commissioners of Excise had
seriously thought of prosecuting him. The counties which the new impost
particularly affected had always been Tory counties. It was the boast of
John Philips, the poet of the English vintage, that the cider-land had
ever been faithful to the throne, and that all the pruning-hooks of her
thousand orchards had been beaten into swords for the service of the
ill-fated Stuarts. The effect of Bute's fiscal scheme was to produce an
union between the gentry and yeomanry of the cider-land and the Whigs of
the