“You have made so very free with me personally in this conference, my lord,” she said, “that I hope you will think I am entitled to speak my mind with very little reserve to you; and believe me, my lord, I am no more to be imposed upon by your professions than I am to be terrified by your threats.” She then reminded Lord Stair of the part he had played in supporting the Peerage Bill in the last reign, which, she held, was against the interests of the Prince of Wales and the liberties of the people, and went on to say: “To talk therefore in the patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion can move me, my lord, to nothing but laughter. Where you get your lesson I do not want to know. Your system of politics you collect from the _Craftsman_, your sentiments, or rather your professions, from my Lord Bolingbroke and my Lord Carteret--whom you may tell, if you think fit, _that I have long known them to be two as worthless men of parts as any in this country, and whom I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so_.”[88] All this the Queen said, and much more to the same effect, which convinced Lord Stair that she would do nothing against Walpole, so he took his leave saying: “Madam, you are deceived, and the King is betrayed”. He went back to the malcontent peers to tell them of the interview, from which he was fain to confess he had no results to show; but he boasted that he had at least told the Queen some home truths which she would not be likely to forget. Finding that Walpole was determined, despite remonstrance, to introduce his excise scheme, and was supported by the King and Queen, the Opposition organised a popular agitation against it. The whole country was flooded with pamphlets, and meetings were everywhere held. Disaffection to the Government ran like wildfire throughout the land, and from all parts of the kingdom the cry was: “No slavery, no excise, no wooden shoes”--this last was aimed at the German tendencies of the court. Public agitation rose to a greater height than it had done since the Jacobite rising of 1715. The city of London and nearly every borough in England held meetings to protest against the scheme, and passed resolutions commanding their representatives to oppose any extension of the excise in any form whatever. The agitation went on for months, increasing in volume and in violence, though the scheme was yet in embryo, and the measure had not been laid before Parliament. The more timid among Walpole’s supporters took alarm and urged him to abandon the contemplated measure. But the Prime Minister, who during these years of almost absolute power had become a dictator, refused to listen. He paid little heed to the press, and declared that the whole agitation was a got-up job. If he yielded to clamour in this matter he would have to do so in others and would be left, he said, with only the shadow of power.