Note 12 — THE EXCISE BILL (1733).
Reading edition
The attempted repeal of the Test Act.
[13] This feeling found expression in various scurrilous ballads. The following verse may serve as a specimen:
Who would think it a hardship that men so polite Should enter their houses by day or by night, To poke in each hole, and examine their stock, From the cask of right Nantz to their wives' Holland smock? He's as cross as the devil Who censures as evil A visit so courteous, so kind, and so civil; For to sleep in our beds without their permit, Were in a free country a thing most unfit.