[Illustration: _PLATE XLIX._ 1--BRISTOL, WHITE BISCUIT 2--BRISTOL, WHITE GLAZED WARE] supporter of the American colonists in their dispute with the mother country. The visit of Edmund Burke to Bristol in 1774, and his election as member for the city, may be regarded as the climax of his career. Then it was that the famous tea-set was presented by Champion and his wife to Mrs. Burke, as a _pignus amicitiæ_. Still more elaborately decorated was the other service that Burke gave to Mrs. Smith, the wife of the friend of Champion, at whose house he stayed on this occasion. The shapes and the decoration of this service were founded on Dresden models, and the wreaths of laurels that formed an essential part of the design afforded a good field for the display of the green colour in which Champion excelled. But Champion’s troubles were now to begin. In 1775 his petition to Parliament for a renewal of his patent was vigorously opposed by Wedgwood. Champion must have been put to great expense--he exhibited before a committee of the House some selected specimens of his porcelain. He, however, won his case, though the monopoly in the employment of the Cornish clays was restricted to their use as a material for _transparent_ wares, a point of some importance to the Staffordshire potter. But meantime the American War was ruining his business--for Champion was in the first place a merchant trading with the West Indies and America--and it is probable that little porcelain was made by him after 1777. The next year Wedgwood, his inveterate opponent, in a letter to Bentley, says of him, ‘Poor Champion, you may have heard, is quite demolished.... I suppose we might buy some Growan-stone and Growan-clay now upon easy terms.’ In 1781, after a long negotiation, he disposed of his patent to some Staffordshire potters, and shortly after this he emigrated to America. Champion was only forty-eight years old when, in 1791, he died at his new home in South Carolina.