For the good Premier, who is dozing:
Whilst to each patriot’s loudest roar
N[or]th answers with a well-tim’d snore.
Till by some shriller trebles vex’d,
He discants on the good Knight’s text.
magic plates. Hartley had invented an arrangement of thin iron strips to be placed as a lining under floors and above ceilings to prevent fire. An anonymous handbill of four quarto pages, dated July 1776 and called An Account of Some Experiments Made with the Fire-Plates, Together with a Description of the Manner of Application, and an Estimate of the Expence, contains newspaper accounts of unsuccessful attempts to burn a house near Reading equipped with Hartley’s plates.
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the Noble Lord, who presided in the American department. George Sackville Germain (1716-1785), called Lord George Germain, third son of the first Duke of Dorset; M.P. for East Grinstead and Secretary of State for Colonies; cr. Viscount Sackville, 1782. As minister in charge of military operations in America, Germain bore the brunt of frequent and savage onslaughts by Opposition. His famous Kentish holiday, which delayed dispatches to Sir William Howe in New York, was long supposed to have caused Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga; Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 1875-76, I, 358-359; but cf. Troyer Steele Anderson, The Command of the Howe Brothers during the American Revolution, New York, 1936, ch. xiv. Germain’s resignation was forced in January 1782, two months before North’s government fell.
the Earl of Bute. John Stuart (1713-1792), third Earl of Bute; favorite of George III in the early years of the reign; First Lord of the Treasury, 1762-63, but forced to resign on account of his unpopularity, to which the anti-Scots propaganda of Wilkes largely contributed. Lord North was popularly regarded as the political heir of Lord Bute.