[978] Boswell here falls into a mistake.  About harvest-time in 1766, there were corn-riots owing to the dearness of bread.  By the Act of the 15th of Charles II, corn, when under a certain price, might be legally exported.  On Sept. 26, 1766, before this price had been reached, the Crown issued a proclamation to prohibit the exportation of grain.  When parliament met in November, a bill of indemnity was brought in for those concerned in the late embargo.  ’The necessity of the embargo was universally allowed;’ it was the exercise by the Crown of a power of dispensing with the laws that was attacked.  Some of the ministers who, out of office, ‘had set up as the patrons of liberty,’ were made the object ’of many sarcasms on the beaten subject of occasional patriotism.’ Ann.  Reg. x. 39-48, and Dicey’s Law of the Constitution, p. 50.

[979] St. Mark, ii. 9.

[980] Anecdotes, p. 43.  BOSWELL.  The passage is from the Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775.  Payne’s Burke, i. 173.  The image of the angel and Lord Bathurst was thus, according to Mrs. Piozzi, parodied by Johnson:—­’Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last age, the devil had, not with great impropriety, consented to appear.’  See ante, iii. 326, where Johnson said ‘the first Whig was the Devil.’

[981] Boswell was stung by what Mrs. Piozzi wrote when recording this parody.  She said that she had begged Johnson’s leave to write it down directly.  ‘A trick,’ she continues, ’which I have seen played on common occasions of sitting steadily [? stealthily] down at the other end of the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in another.  There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that, were it commonly adopted, all confidence would soon be exiled from society.’  See post, under June 30, 1784, where Boswell refers to this passage.

[982]

     ’Who’er offends, at some unlucky time
      Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.’

Pope, Imitations of Horace, 2 Satires, i. 78.

[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licentiousness of the press, Townshend joined together Johnson and Shebbeare.  Burke, who followed him, said nothing about Johnson.  Fitzherbert, speaking of Johnson as ’my friend,’ defended him as ‘a pattern of morality.’ Cavendish Debates, i.514.  On Feb. 16, 1774, when Fox drew attention to a ‘vile libel’ signed A South Briton, Townshend said ’Dr. Shebbeare and Dr. Johnson have been pensioned, but this wretched South Briton is to be prosecuted.’  It was Fox, and not Burke, who on this occasion defended Johnson. Parl.  Hist. xvii.1054.  As Goldsmith was writing Retaliation at the very time that this second attack was made, it is very likely that it was the occasion, of the change in the line.