On the supposition that there was no secret treaty the English Opposition desired that no notice might be taken of the transaction, and reprobated the action of the Government in forming a counter treaty as Hanoverian. But there can be little doubt that there was a secret treaty. Its tenor was afterwards disclosed by Ripperda. In it the marriages between the two houses were arranged; Austria and Spain pledged themselves to assist the restoration of the Stuarts; and to compel, if necessary by force, the restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca. The existence of this treaty before long reached the ears of the English ministers. For some little time the Jacobites had been extremely active. An envoy had come to rouse the loyalty of the clans, and had found them not disinclined to revolt; and the Duke of Wharton, one of the Jacobite leaders, had gone abroad and held ostentatiously secret meetings with Ripperda. Ripperda's own tongue was none of the quietest, and he boasted constantly of his great plans. The threat against the power of England was rendered more dangerous by the attitude of Russia, where the Empress Catherine, who was receiving large subsidies from the Spanish court, was eager to win for her son-in-law the Duke of Holstein the province of Sleswig, which the Danes had taken from him.

But the skilful though selfish policy of Prussia, and the pacific tendencies of Walpole and of the new French minister Fleury, produced an arrangement. The Emperor found that his position was becoming dangerous. Prussia, at once the leader of the princely opposition to the Imperial house, and yet thoroughly German in its tendencies, determined to be neutral. It could not assist the Emperor in supporting a treaty which by its marriage clauses threatened to put a Spanish prince on the Imperial throne. The King had hopes of gaining from France some portion of the Juliers succession. But the house of Brandenburg had become of great Preliminaries of peace. May 31, 1727. importance in European politics; neither party could well act without it. Its neutrality induced the Emperor to consent to the signature of preliminaries of peace, signed at Paris on the 31st of May 1727. He agreed to suspend the Ostend Company for seven years, and to refer other disputes to the general Congress. The pacific policy which had produced this arrangement was Walpole's. The skill which had formed the Treaty of Hanover, the dread of which had undoubtedly produced the peace, belonged to Townshend. And here began the ill-feeling between the brothers-in-law which ultimately produced the disruption of their friendship.

The period of this exciting foreign crisis was rendered interesting in England by the rising power of the Opposition to Walpole. At the back of that Opposition was constantly Bolingbroke. Enormous bribes had secured for him the favour of the Duchess of Opposition to Walpole headed by Bolingbroke. Kendal. Great stress had been brought to bear on Walpole to consent to his complete restitution. But Walpole would go no further than to allow a restoration of property, the attainder and consequent exclusion from the House of Peers was kept constantly suspended over his head. His anger against the minister who thus thwarted him knew no bounds. He set himself to work to form an Opposition. William Pulteney, an old friend of Walpole's, but like Carteret cast off as too able, lent himself to Bolingbroke's plans, and became his mouthpiece in the House of Commons. Between them they established the Opposition paper, the Craftsman, and under their influence every measure of the Government was vigorously attacked by the Jacobite or Whig members. Underhand intrigue promised to be even more effectual than overt opposition. The Duchess of Kendal, by dint of bribing, had grown to be zealous in the cause of the Opposition. She was constantly at work on the King, urging the full restoration of Bolingbroke, urging even the admission of him and his friends to the ministry, and the dismissal of Walpole. George indeed held bravely to his old minister. He showed him the insidious attacks which the Duchess put into his hands, and allowed him thus to meet and counteract them. But Walpole himself felt that the constant importunity of the favourite would sooner or later have its effect. He was even, it is said, thinking of withdrawing to the Upper The King's death. June 9, 1727. House, when the King's death at Osnabrück, on his return home from Hanover, put an end for a moment to the almost successful intrigue.

England had been singularly fortunate in escaping the dangers which generally accompany a violent change of dynasty. The attention of the new Government is usually so constantly directed towards the maintenance of its position in the face of the eager opposition of its worsted rivals, that it neglects the external interests of the country, and the nation sinks for a time into insignificance. In the first days of the Revolution the nation had fortunately fallen into the hands of a great statesman, whose wide policy, carried out with consummate ability by the Duke of Increased importance of England abroad. Marlborough, had raised it to a very high position. At Utrecht it had treated as one of the first European nations. The skill of Stanhope had secured the prestige thus won. It was England which was the chief power of the Quadruple Alliance, her fleet in the Mediterranean which gave the first great blow to the plans of Alberoni. Twice the appearance of her fleet in the Baltic had overawed the North, and when the new European combination brought about by the Treaty of Vienna had threatened the existing arrangements of Europe, it was the diplomacy of England which called into existence the counter Treaty of Hanover.

At home the survey of the reign is not so satisfactory. There was deep depravity in both domestic and public life. The licentiousness which had marked the whole Stuart period had lost nothing of its wickedness, but a good deal of its elegance, in its union with the corruption of a small German court. With a king without wit, without taste for the arts, without knowledge of literature, without perception of beauty, and swayed by two ugly, ignorant and rapacious mistresses, we hear with no surprise tales of the coarseness of the time. If possible, the depravity of public life was greater than the private immorality. It is enough to mark the character of the reign that the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Macclesfield, was towards its close convicted of disgracing the seat of justice by receiving bribes, and was removed with ignominy from his office; that three ministers at least, if not more, were compromised in the iniquitous transactions of the South Sea Company, and that the King's mistress amassed an immense fortune from the bribes by which her favour was purchased. But even worse than this shameless venality was the political infidelity which universally prevailed. It is this which is the real danger of a disputed succession. There is an uncertainty as to which party may ultimately be successful, which engenders a spirit of political gambling, while for any fancied insults, or any real loss of power, immediate revenge can be sought by a mere transfer, and frequently a secret transfer of allegiance. To this may be added the tendency of compulsory oaths, which men persuade themselves that they may accept as a matter of form, and which therefore weaken all sense of conscientious engagements. There was hardly a statesman of note who had not more or less tampered with the Jacobite party. Even Walpole is not quite clear of the charge, while the whole body of High Tories were in constant danger of drifting into Jacobitism.

Nor was this the only cause leading to low political morality. The reigning King was a foreigner in all his habits and in all his tastes. He was surrounded by a Hanoverian court, who regarded England as an instrument for the aggrandizement of Hanover, and formed a centre for all intrigues to win the royal favour at the expense of patriotism. It is strange, indeed, that their influence was less directly felt in English politics, and it is perhaps owing to those very Hanoverian predilections of the King, which are so often urged against him, that their influence was not greater. He was so thoroughly German in language and in thought, he was so incapable of comprehending the English Constitution and manners, that his real interests were entirely centred on his Hanoverian dominions, and in all matters in which they were not concerned he left England to work out its own revolution, and was compelled, moreover, to throw himself wholly into the hands of that party on whom the revolution rested, and with whom it was a matter of life and death to secure the completion of that revolution, and to maintain the security of the Parliamentary King. It was fortunate that that party was guided by the wisdom of Walpole. That jealousy of power which was his chief weakness was itself an advantage, since it tended to exclude from power the Tory party, and gave a united character to the Government, which proved the hopelessness of success to all who did not accept it.

GEORGE II.

The ascendancy of Walpole was in great jeopardy on the death of George I. Bolingbroke's intrigues against him, backed by all the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, had indeed been thwarted by the straightforward manner in which George I. had put all complaints against him into the minister's own hands—a striking instance of that love of justice and fidelity to old friends which were the redeeming traits of his otherwise uninteresting character. But Walpole had now to do with a sovereign whom as Prince of Wales he had always opposed, and who had been known to use strong expressions of disapprobation with regard to him. George II., a little, dry man, gifted with the hereditary bravery and obstinacy of his family, but with very limited abilities, and a mind far more easily touched by little things than by broad interests, could not be expected to forget Walpole's opposition, nor to appreciate his calm, tolerant wisdom. When Walpole brought him the news of his father's death, he was at once directed to apply to Sir Spencer Compton, a dull, orderly man, Speaker of the House of Commons and Treasurer to the Prince of Wales. Walpole was wise enough to profess friendship for the new favourite, who even employed the ability of his predecessor to draw up the speech which the King was to deliver to the Council. For some days it was believed that Walpole's power was gone. His usual throng of followers deserted him and crowded to Sir Spencer Compton's levée. But before any definite arrangements had been made, Sir Spencer unwisely gave Walpole opportunities for personally explaining himself to the King. He was thus able to remove the bad impression the King had received as to his foreign policy, and to outbid his rivals in the arrangements he proposed to make for the Civil List, a point very close to the King's heart. He completely succeeded in winning the Queen to his interests; and when she heard that Compton had had to appeal to his assistance in arranging the speech from the throne, she took the opportunity of impressing upon George the absurdity of employing a minister who was obliged to lean for support upon his rival. The Queen's influence, which was very great, turned the scale in his favour. The ministry continued unchanged. Compton, feeling his brief importance at an end, withdrew from the contest, and shortly afterwards accepted the position of President of the Council as Lord Wilmington.

The offer which had proved so effective a means for securing Walpole's power consisted of £130,000 to the Civil List, and a jointure of £100,000 to Queen Caroline. The Civil List, which had been settled after the Revolution at £700,000 a year from all sources, had proved insufficient, saddled as it then was with a variety of expenses, such as the judges' and ambassadors' salaries, beyond the mere expenses of the Court. Anne had been £1,200,000 in debt, George I. £1,000,000. Walpole now offered to induce the House to raise it to £800,000 a year, allowing the King to claim anything beyond that sum which should arise from the hereditary revenues.

Before long Walpole won the entire confidence of the King himself, but it was at first chiefly on the friendship of the Queen that he relied. She was a woman of very considerable ability. Her intellectual fault indeed was an attempt to know too much. She collected around her men of learning of all sorts, dabbled in divinity, dabbled in metaphysics, patronized poetry, and delighted in listening to theological discussions, in which she kept the part of strict neutrality, believing it is thought but little on either side. But her influence in bringing forward men of ability, especially in the Church, was very great. Her sense was excellent, and by means of it, in spite of the King's royal immorality, she contrived to rule him absolutely. She thoroughly appreciated Walpole, and together they pursued that policy, which was no doubt the right one Character of Walpole's ministry. for the maintenance of the Hanoverian succession. This consisted in the pursuit of peace in every direction—peace abroad, peace at home. If any point was strongly contested it was given up; if any abuse was unobserved it was suffered to rest untouched; and in general their object was to let the nation learn by its material prosperity the advantages of an orderly and settled Government. As a consequence of this policy the period of Walpole's government was uneventful, and was occupied rather with the great Parliamentary struggle between himself and the Opposition under Pulteney than by any great national affairs.

The chief strength of that Opposition consisted of the discontented Whigs, most of whom were driven to oppose Walpole by his insatiable love of power. We have already seen Pulteney and Carteret forced from the ranks of the Government, and all overtures with Bolingbroke rejected. In 1730, Walpole quarrelled with his old friend and brother-in-law Townshend, who was only restrained by his patriotism from joining the Opposition. In 1733, Lord Chesterfield was added to the list. These leaders had behind them a certain quantity of supporters who took the name of Patriots, and wished to be regarded as the true old Whigs, looking upon Walpole with his large majority as seceders from them. There was much plausibility in this view: for the Whig party under Walpole seemed to have become closely attached to the Crown, and was supported principally by Crown influence. As the original principle of the Whigs had been antagonism to the over-great power of the Crown, it could be plausibly urged that they had now assumed the position of their former enemies. The Hanoverian line had ascended the throne with a parliamentary as contrasted with a hereditary title; it had therefore naturally found its chief supporters among the Whigs. With the Hanoverians that party had entered upon power. But the Revolution, while practically subordinating the power of the King to that of Parliament, had constitutionally left it untouched. The Hanoverian kings did not indeed employ it to its full, but placed it in the hands of the minister, who, by means of the royal influence, practically ruled England with as unquestioned a sway as any great minister of the Stuarts. The difference lay in this, that the power of the Crown consisted in the immense influence it possessed by means of pensions, places, and the command of the public money, and worked through the House of Commons, and not in opposition to it. The patriot Whigs were conscious of the power of the Crown, and were true to their principles in opposing it. Their error lay in this, that they did not understand that that power was formidable only so long as there was a venal House of Commons. Eager as they thought for liberty, they formed a close connection with the High Tories and Jacobites, the greatest enemies of liberty; and in their eagerness for office did their best to oppose that Government, which for the present, at all events, was the only safeguard against the restoration of the Stuarts, for the events of 1745 render it plain that danger from the Jacobites was as yet by no means over. In fact, however, principle had little to do with the matter, it was personal animosity to the minister, and anger at exclusion from office, which inspired the Opposition. Even the party names "Whig" and "Tory" were beginning to lose their meaning. By far the greater portion of the House was thoroughly attached to the Hanoverian succession. Some fifty Jacobites sat in it under the guidance of Shippen, and a certain number of country gentlemen, with Wyndham at their head, still retained the title of Hanoverian Tories. But the Parliamentary struggle lay in fact between different sections of the Whigs, either of which, whatever their pretensions may have been when out of office, would probably have acted in much the same way had they succeeded in obtaining it. It was not till the close of this reign and the beginning of the next that the old party names began again to acquire significance. It had become evident that the power and influence of the Crown, but little diminished, as has been said, at the Revolution, had as it were been placed in commission in the hands of the great leaders of the Whig party, who by means of their own Parliamentary influence, added to the King's power which they wielded, had assumed a monopoly of the Government antagonistic at once to the Crown and to the people. Those who regarded this condition of things as a disturbance of the old balance of the Constitution began to rally round the King, and when George III. resumed into his own hands the power of the Crown and broke with the Whig oligarchy, he found his support in this new Tory party.

To oppose the many able men whom enmity to the ministers had driven into the ranks of the Patriots, the Government had little more than the inert strength of an unfailing majority to show. Besides Walpole himself, whose talents were unquestioned, the Government consisted of somewhat second-rate men, such as Newcastle, whose fussy silliness was a constant theme of jest, Stanhope, Lord Harrington, an excellent diplomatist but no politician, and Lord Harvey, a clever but bitter and effeminate courtier. But the Government was supported on almost every question of importance by a vast majority of the House, whose votes the surpassing skill of Walpole as a manager secured—many of them by small places and pensions, or other "considerations," as bribes were then called. That Walpole reduced the purchase of a majority, a practice by no means unknown, to a system must be allowed. It may be urged in his favour, that he used, but did not cause, the venality prevalent among all public men of the time, and employed it so as to secure what was upon the whole the government most advantageous for England at the time.

The folly of the Pretender spared the minister all trouble with regard to the Jacobites, for James had succeeded in alienating his ablest partisans. He had quarrelled with Atterbury as he quarrelled with Bolingbroke, he had excited scandal by his quarrel with his wife, and had suffered an unworthy favourite, Colonel Hay, or Lord Inverness as he called himself, to supplant all his better partisans in his favour. And when the death of Lord Mar was followed by that of the Duke of Wharton and of Atterbury in 1732, the Jacobite cause fell into the hands of very inferior agents, whose intrigues, insignificant as they were, seem to have been thoroughly known by Walpole.

It was thus with one source of danger practically removed that Walpole resumed the threads of foreign policy. The last reign had European complications. closed before peace had been concluded with Spain, and while there were still unsettled difficulties with the court of Vienna, although preliminaries had been signed both in Paris and in Spain by what is known as the Convention of the Pardo. It must indeed have been obvious that the Treaty of Vienna, plausible as it seemed, could not have been a lasting treaty. The Bourbons were upon the throne of Spain, and the close junction of the houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg was an impossible contradiction of all history, especially as the desire which was really the moving passion of the Spanish court, the establishment, namely, of a Spanish kingdom in Italy, was fundamentally opposed to the interests of Austria. At the same time the shadow of the approaching dissolution of his kingdom at his death was constantly overhanging the Emperor. No ideas of present greatness, not even the hope of restoring the Empire to the position it had held under Charles V., appeared in his eyes so important as to secure the reversion of his own estates for his daughter, according to the Pragmatic Sanction, by which, in 1713, he had arranged the succession to his hereditary kingdoms. It was impossible for him to hurry into a general war, which must of necessity prevent the acceptance of that arrangement. There was already a strongly expressed feeling in Germany against the marriages on which the Vienna Treaty rested, and which might have the effect of placing a Spaniard on the Imperial throne. The threatened secession of his chief allies, and the fear of postponing the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction, were sufficient reasons to induce the Emperor to withdraw from his bargain. He therefore accepted the mediation of France, where Fleury, though he probably never forgot the old policy of the country which he governed, always apparently exhibited a love of peace; and it was agreed that disputed points should be referred to a general Congress to be held at Aix-la-Chapelle, but subsequently moved to Soissons.

At the Congress the Emperor, afraid of exciting the national prejudices of the Germans, entirely deserted his Spanish allies, and instead of hastening a favourable negotiation, perpetually threw obstacles in the way. As far as England was concerned, the great point at issue was Gibraltar, which Spain had already besieged in vain. The ministry, both before and now, seem to have regarded the surrender of it as neither impossible nor very injurious; the view of the nation was very different. But as is so often the case, the Congress came to very little. Spain, finding herself deserted by Austria, and observing that the Congress was falling Treaty of Seville. Nov. 9, 1729. to pieces by constant delays, had recourse to a direct treaty; and on the 9th of November 1729 the celebrated Treaty of Seville was signed. It was a defensive alliance between England, Spain and France, to which Holland subsequently acceded. Spain revoked all the privileges granted to Austrian subjects by the treaties of Vienna, re-established English trade in America on its former footing, and restored all captures. The Assiento was confirmed to the South Sea Company, and arrangements made for securing the succession of Parma and Tuscany to the Infant Don Carlos, by substituting Spanish troops for the neutral forces, which since the Preliminaries had been occupying those countries.

The Emperor now found that he had outwitted himself. He had clung to the Treaty of Vienna just long enough to irritate two of the Disappointment of the Emperor. great countries of Europe, he had put difficulties in the way of its completion, and hesitated about fulfilling it, just long enough to irritate the third. Old friends and old foes had made common cause. His hopes for the Pragmatic Sanction seemed entirely gone. It was not likely that he would sit down quietly while Spanish troops occupied fortresses in what he considered his dominions. He broke off all diplomatic relations with Spain, sent troops into Italy, and on the death of the Duke of Parma seized his duchy. But all men really knew that the bribe was ready, if they would only give it, to put an end to all his opposition. And the impatient Queen of Spain—angry with the shilly-shally policy of her new allies (who would not insist with sufficient rapidity on the completion of the Seville treaty), throwing over France, which she regarded as the chief delinquent in the matter—joined with England and Holland to offer the long wished for guarantee. Thus at length by the second Treaty of Vienna all the much vexed questions were decided. Austria was glad to accept the Second Treaty of Vienna. March 16, 1731. terms proposed at Seville, agreed to destroy the Ostend Company, to establish Don Carlos in his duchies, and not again to threaten the balance of European power. And in 1732, under the escort of English ships, the Spanish troops took possession of the disputed fortresses.

Both these treaties were arranged in accordance with the pacific views of Walpole. When the second was concluded he was absolute master of affairs in England; for almost immediately after the Treaty of Seville the old jealousy which had long smouldered between him and Townshend burst out, and Townshend had found it necessary to withdraw. Townshend was a proud, rough man, ill fitted to play the subordinate part which Walpole was determined to thrust upon his colleagues. Besides general ill-feeling, several specific grounds of difference existed between them. The first Treaty of Vienna had greatly irritated Townshend, who would have wished to avoid all compromise and to proceed to extremities with the Emperor. The link which had bound the brothers-in-law together had been broken by the death of Lady Townshend, Walpole's sister; and Walpole's conduct with regard to the Pension Bill supplied a fresh ground of quarrel. The Opposition had discovered, without exactly tracing it to its constitutional The Pension Bill. source, the power of the royal influence, and early in 1730 Mr. Sandys introduced the first of those Bills for restraining it which became from this time onwards one of the regular weapons of attack against the ministry. He moved for leave to bring in a Bill to disable all persons from sitting in Parliament who had any pension direct or indirect from the Crown, and proposed that every member as he took his seat should swear that he held no such pension. The attack was exceedingly well judged, for it gave expression to a very general feeling, and Walpole, who studiously avoided shocking the feelings of any large section of the nation, was at some loss how to meet it. But he knew that he could rely upon his great Whig supporters in the Upper House, and of that House Townshend was the leader. Walpole therefore suffered the Bill to pass the Lower House without opposition, so that it was upon Townshend and the Lords that the whole odium fell when, as a matter of course, they rejected it. On these and various other grounds such ill blood sprang up between the brothers, that it is told, though upon doubtful authority, that they nearly came to blows at an entertainment in the house of Mrs. Retirement of Townshend. 1731. Selwyn. It was impossible that both the ministers should remain in office; the influence of the Queen turned the scale in favour of Walpole, and Townshend resigned, withdrawing with unusual patriotism from political life, and devoting himself at Reynham, his house in Norfolk, to the improvement of agriculture. It is to him that we chiefly owe the cultivation of turnips. This change, by allowing a proper rotation of crops, and thus avoiding the necessity of leaving fields to lie fallow, added nearly a third to the cultivable area of England, while by supplying large quantities of cattle-food from a comparatively small space of ground, it enormously increased the food-producing resources of the country.

For two years the ascendancy of Walpole was unquestioned. He was enabled to turn his thoughts to domestic improvements. English was substituted, certainly most reasonably, for the ancient Law Latin in all legal proceedings, to the grief it is said of some conservative lawyers, and against the opposition of most of the judges. There was a Committee of Inquiry also into the condition of public prisons, which brought many revolting horrors to light. Both in the Fleet and Marshalsea torture by thumbscrew and otherwise was constant, and the condition of poor prisoners who could not bribe the gaolers was inconceivably horrid. Forty or fifty of them, for instance, were locked up for the night in a cell not sixteen feet square. Gaol-fever and famine were constantly destroying them, so that the deaths at one prison were frequently eight or ten a day.

But it was as a financier that Walpole was most favourably known, and somewhat strangely it was a great financial reform in the year 1733 that almost brought him to ruin. Walpole was desirous of lessening even the weak opposition by which he was confronted in Parliament; and in the hope of attracting to himself the country gentlemen, he appealed, in accordance with his usual principle, to their love of money, and sought some way to lessen the Land Tax. For this purpose he suggested an excise upon salt. This must have been contrary to his own convictions. He could not have been ignorant how important an article salt is in many manufactures, how necessary an article of purchase even among the poorest. He was in fact taxing the poor and the manufacturing classes for the sake of winning the landed interest, which would be called upon to pay a land tax of one instead of two shillings. The new duty was carried, but by no large majority. The chief argument against it was that it was a step towards a general excise, which, because it seemed to infringe on the rights of the subject by giving revenue officers the right of entering houses, was much detested, and regarded as a badge of servitude. Although the tax upon salt was not really intended as a beginning of a general excise, it was nevertheless true that Walpole had a scheme of that nature in his mind: for it was found after a year's experience that the new tax upon salt fell short by two-thirds of the sum required to admit of the reduction of the Land Tax to one shilling. It was to a new measure of excise that Walpole looked to supply the deficiency. The excisable articles at that time were malt, salt, and distilleries, and the produce of the tax in 1733 was about £3,200,000. When Walpole's project of extending the excise got wind it proved most repugnant to the people. Numerous meetings were held, and many members were instructed to vote against any such attempt. But when the project was brought before the House, then in Committee, it appeared that Walpole, disowning all intention of establishing a general excise, confined himself solely to the duties on wine and tobacco; and even on those commodities designed no increase of the present duties, but merely a change in the manner of collecting them. In future the dues were to be collected after the manner of an excise from the retailers, and not as heretofore in the form of customs at the ports. Fraud and smuggling were so prevalent that in tobacco alone the customs, which ought to have produced £750,000 a year, produced in fact only £160,000. As these frauds took place chiefly at the ports or along the seaboard, Walpole hoped by taxing the retail trade, and not the importation, much to lessen them. In addition to this, he would have established a system of warehousing without tax for re-exportation, thus making London a free port. It was undoubtedly an excellent plan. As he pointed out, it was the shops and warehouses alone which were under supervision, not the houses of the retailers; liberty was in no way infringed; it enabled him to remit the Land Tax to the advantage of the country gentlemen; the scheme was advantageous to the importer, who could re-export free of duty; the price of the commodity was not raised. But none the less did it meet with the most violent opposition. Wyndham likened it to the unjust imposts of Empson and Dudley, and Pulteney derided it as a vast plan to cure an almost imaginary evil. The people beset the doors of the House during the debate in great crowds, irritating Walpole till he let fall the unhappy words—"It may be said that they came hither as humble suppliants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars;" an expression which was never forgiven. The resolution was carried, but by an unusually small majority. On this and subsequent motions a Bill was founded, and in the course of many discussions a new cry was raised by Pulteney, that, as most of the seaport boroughs were already in the hands of one or the other branch of the administration, this was a plan for bringing inland towns under the same influences; and before the Bill came to a second reading, the ministerial majority of sixty had dwindled to sixteen. The excitement became dangerous; even the army was infected, and Walpole, according to his usual principle, yielded to the violence of the storm and withdrew the Bill. But though thus thwarted, he did not forego his revenge on the defaulters of his own party. Chesterfield, the ablest man in the ministry, Lord-Steward of the Household, was somewhat rudely dismissed. Lord Clinton, the Earl of Burlington, the Duke of Montrose, the Earls of Marchmont and Stair, and by a questionable exercise of prerogative the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham, were deprived of their commission in the army,—an arbitrary act not lost sight of by the Opposition.

As Walpole, true to his principles, had purchased peace at home by concession, we find him the next year for the same object keeping entirely aloof from a new war which had broken out in Europe. The Peaces of Seville and Vienna had apparently completed the arrangements of the Treaty of Utrecht, and settled all differences between the courts of Spain and Vienna; but treaties based upon arbitrary territorial arrangements for the purpose of preserving the balance of power are always very liable to be broken. Neither Fresh European war. party considers itself quite fairly treated, and is ever on the look-out for some opening to regain its lost power or to acquire some new influence. The Peace of Utrecht had closed the War of Succession, undertaken solely to establish the balance of power in Europe, and had been exactly such a treaty as has been described. The Peaces of Seville and Vienna had been necessary to modify in some degree its arrangements. A quarrel as to the election of a new King of Poland was sufficient to render for the time all three of them useless. It will be remembered that the French King had married the daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland. All French influence therefore was now employed to secure his re-election, while the Czarina Anne of Russia and the Emperor strongly upheld the claims of Augustus, son of the late King. A Russian and a Saxon army were sufficient to secure the throne for Augustus; but the Emperor's interference, although indirect, had enabled Fleury to show himself in his true colours, to listen to that great section of his countrymen who were weary of the lengthened peace, and to bring on a war which promised to be far more advantageous to France than any success in Poland could have been. In his attack upon Austria he was joined at once by Spain: for the Queen, the real ruler of the Peninsula, was still discontented with the losses Spain had suffered by the late treaties, and was besides very anxious to secure a crown for her son Don Carlos, who was already Duke of Parma. There was a short campaign upon the Rhine, where Berwick commanded the French, Eugene the Imperial army. Though the French lost their general before Philipsburg, they were everywhere successful, and when the united armies of Spain and Sardinia threw themselves on the kingdom of Naples, they found no great difficulty in conquering the Austrians, and completing the conquest of that country and of Sicily by the victory of Bitonto. Don Carlos assumed the kingdom as Charles III.

Walpole had been more than usually anxious to keep clear of European wars, because the time for the dissolution of the Parliament under the Septennial Act was rapidly approaching, and there seemed every reason to believe that the struggle at the coming election would be a very fierce one. The Opposition were already supplied with several very effective cries. The Excise scheme, the arbitrary punishment of his opponents, and his determination to keep up a standing army, would all powerfully excite the people against the minister. Before the dissolution they added one more cry against him by making a strong attack upon the Septennial Act. As most of the Opposition Whigs had voted for this Act, they had always shrunk from demanding its repeal. It required all the skill of Bolingbroke, the wire-puller of the Opposition, to induce the two parties to unite in the assault. The debate is interesting, as showing in a great speech of Wyndham the temper of the Opposition and the sort of charges to which Walpole was exposed. "Let us suppose," said Wyndham, "a man abandoned to all notions of virtue and honour, of no great family, and of but a mean fortune, raised to Wyndham's speech against Walpole. be chief Minister of State by the concurrence of many whimsical events, afraid or unwilling to trust any but creatures of his own making, and most of them equally abandoned to all notions of virtue or honour, a man ignorant of the true history of his country, and consulting nothing but that of enriching and aggrandizing himself and his favourites; in foreign affairs trusting none but those whose education makes it impossible for them to have such knowledge or such qualifications as can either be of service to their country or give weight or credit to their negotiations. Let us suppose the true interest of the nation by such means neglected or misunderstood, her honour and credit lost, her trade insulted, her merchants plundered, her sailors murdered; and all these things overlooked only for fear his administration should be endangered. Suppose him next possessed of great wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a Parliament of his own choosing, most of their seats purchased, and their votes bought at the public expense. Let us suppose attempts made to inquire into his conduct, and the reasonable request rejected by a corrupt majority of his creatures.... Upon this scandalous victory let us suppose this chief minister pluming himself in defiances, because he finds he has a Parliament, like a packed jury, ready to acquit him at all adventures. Let us suppose him arrived to that degree of insolence as to domineer over all the men of ancient families, all the men of sense, figure, or fortune in the nation, and as he has no virtue of his own, ridiculing it in others, and endeavouring to destroy or corrupt it in all.... Then let us suppose a prince, ignorant and unacquainted with the inclinations and interests of his people.... Could there any greater curse happen to a nation than such a prince on the throne, advised and solely advised by such a minister, supported by such a Parliament?" Walpole replied in a speech scarcely less vigorous, unveiling the secret influence of Bolingbroke, attributing to him the whole management of the Opposition, and pointing out his vast ambition and unequalled faithlessness.

The election, after a severe struggle, ended by giving Walpole a large majority, although considerably smaller than he had hitherto commanded. The depression of the Opposition was great, especially as Bolingbroke, weary of all exclusion from power, and involved in quarrels with Pulteney, withdrew to France.