Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

HATRED OF THE SCOTCH. 185
whatever interest they were awaited, they had
little chance of fair treatment.
No Scotch work could have appeared at
a more unfavom-able opportunity than was
offered by the close of the year 1761. In
October the government of Pitt, who, by a
combination of splendid abilities, had raised
the fame and prosperity of the country to a
height surpassed at no previous period of
its history, was succeeded by a Tory reaction,
with Bute, a Scotchman and a Jacobite, as
the young King's favourite and chief Minister.
The Court was crowded with his countrymen,
most of them needy adventurers and eager place-
hunters, at once audacious, subservient, and
notoriously corrupt. The change provoked a
storm of indignation which pervaded every class
outside the Court. Bute himself attained a
degree of unpopularity such as has seldom fallen
to the lot of any English Minister ; he was
subjected to every kind of insult ; he was burnt
in effigy, attacked in the streets, and at last
compelled, in fear of his life, to hire a gang of
butchers and prizefighters to protect him.
The literature of the day was deeply in-
fected with the venom of this enmity; and