First edition. In order to reduce the burden of the land tax on the country gentlemen upon whom his ministry depended, and to shift government revenues to other sources, Walpole revived the excise on salt and was considering substituting excise for customs duties on wine and tobacco. This led to alarms that a general excise was intended, and opposition pamphleteers and journals raised a violent outcry against the measures, which partisans of the government keenly defended. Here a pro-ministerial writer attacks Fog’s Weekly Journal for a ‘panegyrick’ upon the assassination of an odious prime minister (of Portugal) as a means of rescuing his country. The controversy raged with undiminished intensity until in April Walpole was forced to abandon the Excise Bill. Goldsmiths’ 7170.

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