The king's influence was strong in the new parliament. Sir Fletcher Norton, a bad-tempered and unprincipled man, who had deeply offended him by his speech with reference to the civil list in 1777, was again proposed as speaker by the opposition, and was rejected by 203 votes to 134 in favour of Cornwall, the ministerial candidate. The session opened languidly and the attendance of the opposition was scanty. After the Christmas recess the struggle with the government was carried on with more energy. Little ground was gained. Burke's bill for a reform of the civil list establishment was rejected by 233 to 190, and a like fate attended other efforts to destroy the means by which parliament was subjected to corrupt influences. Though the Dutch war was popular specially with the mercantile class, which expected to benefit by it, both the nation and the parliament were thoroughly weary of the American war, and the opponents of it in the commons were strengthened by the accession of Pitt who pronounced it "a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war".[148] Yet the news of successes in the south, of a mutiny of the Pennsylvania troops in January, 1781, and of the distress and financial difficulties of the Americans encouraged the government party. Motions hostile to the war were feebly supported, and Fox's jeers at British victories, and his declarations that the money spent on the war was plundered from the nation, that the cause of the Americans was "the cause of freedom, of the constitution, and of whiggism, and that he had in its origin wished it success," excited justifiable indignation. The most serious attack on the government was caused by North's disgraceful manipulation of a loan of L12,000,000. Though more than three times the amount was offered, the loan was arranged on terms so advantageous to the lenders that the price of the new stock rose at once from 9 per cent. to 11 per cent. above par. The profits were calculated by Fox to amount to L900,000, and, as in 1763, the loan was distributed among the supporters of the government, half of it, so it was said, going to members of the house of commons, whether as compensation for election expenses or generally as a means of maintaining a corrupt influence. North's conduct was severely reprehended in both chambers, and in two divisions on the question in the commons the opposition voted 106 to 137 and 163 to 209. The life of the government depended on the fortunes of the war in America; it was prolonged by gleams of success; it was soon to be terminated by an overwhelming disaster.