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Rh with France was concluded, but the troubles of home politics had by that time changed the "confused notion of imitating the Due de Sully," entertained by Lord Bute, into a determination to resign. A fierce outcry against him, against the Peace and against the Scotch, was resounding from one end of the country to the other. Nothing was too absurd to obtain credence. It was, for example, reported that the Minister had sent orders down to Scotland for a good many people to come up armed and set fire to the transfer books of the Stock at the Bank. A thousand other equally wild and absurd stories filled the air, and were believed. At the same time Fox was urgently pressing on his patron at the Treasury that the moment had come to give him the promised reward and allow him to retire. Already, in January, he had written to Bute: "Though your Lordship's goodness and strict honour made it unnecessary, yet that I may not be liable to the least mental reproach, let me tell you, and through you His Majesty, as with the strictest truth I can, that what I feel from sitting in a full House of Commons till nine o'clock at night—though with a vacant mind—were of itself enough to convince me of the impossibility of my continuing there."

The threatened motion of Sir J. Philipps came, in addition to the condition of his health, as an incentive to Fox to resign; and though he took little or no share in the debates on the Cyder Tax, "which was proposed because Sir Francis Dashwood, who had completely lost his nerve at the outburst of popular fury against the tax, could not be made to understand a tax on linen, which was first intended, sufficiently to explain it to the House, and it had to be laid aside in consequence," he certainly had no inducement to remain and share the discredit attaching to the Government which had proposed the obnoxious impost. While in this frame of mind he was suddenly informed of the determination taken by Bute to accompany him into retirement. Against this he strenuously protested, and