Under such a concurrence of untoward circumstances, Charles Townshend proposed the usual tax of four shillings on land, saying, that with other savings and with what might be obtained from the East India Company, Government would be enabled to pay off the four per cents; and pledging himself, that if he should remain Chancellor of the Exchequer another year, he would be for taking off one shilling from land. The Opposition was opened by Dowdeswell, who moved for only three shillings--a man who, having been so lately the active Minister of the finances, knew but too well how ill Government could afford to make the abatement.[321] That very consideration weighed with Lord Rockingham’s faction to join even their aversion, Grenville. Edmund Burke alone had the honesty to stay away rather than support so pernicious a measure. Sir Edmund Isham[322] and Sir Roger Newdigate,[323] half-converted Jacobites, declared, as representatives of the Tories, for the lesser sum, and the latter, to blacken Lord Chatham, made a panegyric on Sir Robert Walpole. They were answered extremely well by Lord North, who began to be talked of for Chancellor of the Exchequer. De Grey, Member for Norfolk, and brother of the Attorney-General, in a strange motley speech, in which he commended Grenville, abused the Administration, blamed and commended Lord Chatham, declared for the three shillings, and vented much invective on eastern and western governors, commissaries, and placemen, who, he and Sir Roger Newdigate said, thrust all the ancient families out of their estates. Beckford, though one of the Members for the City of London, on which the tax fell heaviest, yet said he would concur in what was necessary for the State. Lord Clare showed that all taxes fall ultimately on land, and that the measure of three shillings would be popular only with gentlemen of estates, would not ease labourers, farmers, artificers, and merchants. He spoke with encomium of Lord Chatham, who had first been represented as become insignificant by his peerage, now was reviled as sole Minister. Dr. Hay artfully took notice that Townshend had said he would propose some tax this year on America. Townshend explained, that it was to be done by degrees and on mature consideration; but the loss of the question of one shilling more on land hurried Townshend into new taxes on America, which not only were not well considered by himself or the House, but furnished those repeated occasions of disgust to America, or new pretences for disgust, which opened again the wounds that the repeal of the Stamp Act had closed, and reduced the mother-country to more humiliations, and even to employ the army in curbing their mutinous brethren--happy if either experiment be tried no farther than they have yet been at the end of 1769! Grenville made a great figure on this unhappy question, and, throwing off all reserve about Lord Chatham, remembered that the