raise the price of tobacco, cursed parliament and the administration, and murmurs of treason reached to the very palace walls. Bonfires and illumina- {083} [Illustration: 0089] tions {085}lighted up the towns, and cockades were worn on which was inscribed, "Liberty, Property, and no Excise." In the city of London the mob hung Sir Robert Walpole and a _fat woman_, meant to represent the queen, in effigy. Feeling that the government was in danger on his account, the prime minister sought the queen, and offered to surrender his office, but she would not permit him to do so. Both she and the king declared that they would not be so cowardly nor so ungrateful as to part with him at such a crisis. George had often called Walpole hard names, but under his wife's influence he had learned to love the man whom he had several times pronounced "a noble fellow" on being told what a firm stand he had made against the enemies of the government. Walpole had to withdraw his scheme at last, although he felt sure that it would have been most beneficial to the interest of the nation; and at the next meeting of the parliament, when the question of the tax on tea came up, he declared that he would never again engage in anything that bore the least resemblance to excise. King George revenged himself by having the names of the peers who had opposed his minister read to him, and calling each in turn by some angry epithet. The love that George II. bore towards Walpole, whom he had begun his reign by thoroughly hating, is one of the best proofs of Queen Caroline's power over him; but there are many others besides.