it was a green bag. The bribery which brought this blind
obedience of Toryism filled Coke with fury. In youth he had been taught
never to trust a Tory and he could say "I never have and, by God, I
never will." One of his children asked their mother whether Tories were
born wicked or after birth became wicked. The uncompromising answer was:
"They are born wicked and they grow up worse."

There is, of course, in much of this something of the malignance of
party. In an age when one reverend theologian, Toplady, called another
theologian, John Wesley, "a low and puny tadpole in Divinity" we must
expect harsh epithets. But behind this bitterness lay a deep conviction
of the righteousness of the American cause. At a great banquet at
Holkham, Coke omitted the toast of the King; but every night during the
American war he drank the health of Washington as the greatest man on
earth. The war, he said, was the King's war, ministers were his tools,
the press was bought. He denounced later the King's reception of the
traitor Arnold. When the King's degenerate son, who became George IV,
after some special misconduct, wrote to propose his annual visit to
Holkham, Coke replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on Tuesdays." It
was an independent and irate England which spoke in Coke. Those who
paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. America was not
getting fair play. Both Coke and Fox, and no doubt many others, wore
waistcoats of blue and buff because these were the colors of the
uniforms of Washington's army.

Washington and Coke exchanged messages and they would have been
congenial companions; for Coke, like Washington, was above all a farmer
and tried to improve agriculture. Never for a moment, he said, had
time hung heavy on his hands in the country. He began on his estate the
culture of the potato, and for some time the best he could hear of it
from his stolid tenantry was that it would not poison the pigs.
Coke would have fought the levy of a penny of unjust taxation and he
understood Washington. The American gentleman and the English gentleman
had a common outlook.

Now had come, however, the hour for political separation. By
reluctant but inevitable steps America made up its mind to declare for
independence. At first continued loyalty to the King was urged on the
plea that he was in the hands of evil-minded ministers, inspired by
diabolical rage, or in those of an "infernal villain" such as the
soldier, General