constitution of England to his patient. This pretender in physic, said
he, being consulted, tells the distempered person there were but two or
three ways of treating his disease; and he was afraid that none of
them would succeed. A vomit might throw him into convulsions that would
occasion immediate death; a purge might bring on a diarrhoea that would
carry him off in a short time; and he had been already bled so much,
and so often, that he could bear it no longer. The unfortunate patient,
shocked at this declaration, replies, "Sir, you have always pretended
to be a regular doctor; but now I find you are an arrant quack. I had an
excellent constitution when I first fell into your hands, but you have
quite destroyed it; and now I find I have no other chance for saving
my life, but by calling for the help of some regular physician." In the
debate, the members on both sides seemed to wander from the question,
and indulge themselves in ludicrous personalities. Mr. H. Walpole took
occasion to say, that the opposition treated the ministry as he himself
was treated by some of his acquaintances with respect to his dress. "If
I am in plain clothes," said he, "then they call me a slovenly dirty
fellow; and if by chance I wear a laced suit, they cry, What, shall such
an awkward fellow wear fine clothes?" He continued to sport in this kind
of idle buffoonery. He compared the present administration to a ship
at sea. As long as the wind was fair, and proper for carrying us to our
designed port, the word was, "Steady! steady!" but when the wind began
to shift and change, the word was necessarily altered to "Thus, thus,
and no nearer." The motion was overpowered by the majority; and this
was the fate of several other proposals made by the members in the
opposition. Sir John Barnard presented a petition from the druggists,
and other dealers in tea, complaining of the insults and oppression to
which they were subjected by the excise laws, and imploring relief. Sir
John and Mr. Perry, another of the city members, explained the grievous
hardships which those traders sustained, and moved that the petition
might be referred to the consideration of the whole house. They were
opposed by Mr. Winnington, sir W. Yonge, and other partisans of the
ministry; and these skirmishes brought on a general engagement of the
two parties, in which every weapon of satire, argument, reason, and
truth, was wielded against that odious, arbitrary, and oppressive m