' Bacon's _Nat. Hist._ Exper. No. 1000.
See _ante_, ii. 178.
[511] In a letter to Dr. Taylor on Jan. 21 of this year, he attacked the
scheme of equal representation.' Pitt, on May 7, 1782, made his first
reform motion. Johnson thus ended his letter:--'If the scheme were more
reasonable, this is not a time for innovation. I am afraid of a civil
war. The business of every wise man seems to be now to keep his ground.'
_Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 481.
[512] See _ante_, i. 429, _post_, 170, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept.
30.
[513] The year after this conversation the General Election of 1784 was
held, which followed on the overthrow of the Coalition Ministry and the
formation of the Pitt Ministry in December, 1783. The 'King's friends'
were in a minority of one in the last great division in the old
Parliament; in the motion on the Address in the new Parliament they had
a majority of 168. _Parl. Hist._ xxiv. 744, 843. Miss Burney, writing in
Nov. 1788, when the King was mad, says that one of his physicians 'moved
me even to tears by telling me that none of their own lives would be
safe if the King did not recover, so prodigiously high ran the tide of
affection and loyalty.
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