consequences of that measure, he had strenuously opposed it, as he had opposed all the measures, good and bad, of Sunderland's administration. When the South-Sea Company were voting dividends of fifty per cent., when a hundred pounds of their stock were selling for eleven hundred pounds, when Threadneedle Street was daily crowded with the coaches of dukes and prelates, when divines and philosophers turned gamblers, when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence, the periwigcompany, and the Spanish-jackass-company, and the quicksilverfixation-company, Walpole's calm good sense preserved him from the general infatuation. He condemned the prevailing madness in public, and turned a considerable sum by taking advantage of it in private. When the crash came, when ten thousand families were reduced to beggary in a day, when the people, in the frenzy of their rage and despair, clamoured, not only against the lower agents in the juggle, but against the Hanoverian favourites, against the English ministers, against the King himself, when Parliament met, eager for confiscation and blood, when members of the House of Commons proposed that the directors should be treated like parricides in ancient Rome, tied up in sacks, and thrown into the Thames, Walpole was the man on whom all parties turned their eyes. Four years before he had been driven from power by the intrigues of Sunderland 1 and Stanhope; 2 and the lead in the House of Commons had been intrusted to Craggs 3 and Aislabie. Stanhope was no more. Aislabie was expelled

accepting a much lower rate of interest. The holders of the annuities accepted in lieu of them South Sea stock which rose to a very high figure and then fell as violently when the panic set in. The Act was thus a prime cause of the ruin which ensued.

1 Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland, 1674-1722, entered Parliament in 1695 and became Secretary of State and Commissioner for a Union with Scotland in 1706. He fell with the other Whigs in 1710, was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and afterwards Privy Seal by George I., intrigued against Walpole and Townshend, and succeeded the latter as Secretary of State in 1717. Soon afterwards he became President of the Council and First Lord of the Treasury. He promoted the South Sea Act and was made responsible by the public for the consequences. Although acquitted by a vote of the House of Commons, he had to resign. He died very soon afterwards.

2 See vol. i., p. 525.

3 James Craggs, 1686-1721, entered Parliament in 1713. He had recommended himself to the Elector of Hanover in Queen Anne's lifetime, and when the Elector became George I. Craggs rose fast. In 1718 he was made Secretary of State. He was supposed to be implicated in the South Sea Bubble, but was carried off by small-pox soon after its catastrophe.

John Aislabie, 1670-1742, entered Parliament in 1695 and became Treasurer of the Navy in 1714, a Privy Councillor in 1716 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1718. He was an active promoter of the South Sea Act. He resigned in January,

from Parliament on account of his disgraceful conduct regarding the South-Sea scheme. Craggs was perhaps saved by a timely death from a similar mark of infamy. A large minority in the House of Commons voted for a severe censure on Sunderland, who, finding it impossible to withstand the force of the prevailing sentiment, retired from office, and outlived his retirement but a very short time. The schism which had divided the Whig party was now completely healed. Walpole had no opposition to encounter except that of the Tories; and the Tories were naturally regarded by the King with the strongest suspicion and dislike.

For a time business went on with a smoothness and a despatch such as had not been known since the days of the Tudors. During the session of 1724, for example, there was hardly a single division except on private bills. It is not impossible that, by taking the course which Pelham afterwards took, by admitting into the government all the rising talents and ambition of the Whig party, and by making room here and there for a Tory not unfriendly to the House of Brunswick, Walpole might have averted the tremendous conflict in which he passed the later years of his administration, and in which he was at length vanquished. The Opposition which overthrew him was an opposition created by his own policy, by his own insatiable love of power.

In the very act of forming his Ministry he turned one of the ablest and most attached of his supporters into a deadly enemy. Pulteney 1 had strong public and private claims to a high situation in the new arrangement. His fortune was immense. His private character was respectable. He was already a distinguished speaker. He had acquired official experience in an important post. He had been, through all changes of fortune, a consistent Whig. When the Whig party was split into two sections, Pulteney had resigned a valuable place, and had followed the fortunes of Walpole. Yet, when Walpole returned to power,

1721, soon after a Secret Committee had been appointed to inquire into the South Sea business. In consequence of the inquiry he was expelled the House of Commons. The rest of his life he spent in retirement.

1 William Pulteney, 1684-1764, entered Parliament in 1705, became Secretary at War in 1715, was made a Privy Councillor in 1716 and resigned with Walpole and Townshend in 1717. He first openly broke with Walpole in 1725 on a proposal for discharging the debts of the Civil List. As a leader of the Opposition he made such professions of being disinterested that after Walpole's resignation in 1742 be, from motives of consistency, refused to take office, although he accepted a peerage and became Earl of Bath. He soon saw and regretted his error, and in 1746 joined Carteret in an attempt to form a ministry. Their failure closed Pulteney's political career.

Not long after these events the Opposition was reinforced by the Duke of Argyle,1 a man vainglorious indeed and fickle, but brave, eloquent and popular. It was in a great measure owing to his exertions that the Act of Settlement had been peaceably carried into effect in England immediately after the death of Anne, and that the Jacobite rebellion which, during the following year, broke out in Scotland, had been suppressed. He too carried over to the minority the aid of his great name, his talents, and his paramount influence in his native country.

In each of these cases taken separately, a skilful defender of Walpole might perhaps make out a case for him. But when we see that during a long course of years all the footsteps are turned the same way, that all the most eminent of those public men who agreed with the Minister in their general views of policy left him, one after another, with sore and irritated minds, we find it impossible not to believe that the real explanation of the phænomenon is to be found in the words of his son, "Sir Robert Walpole loved power so much that he would not endure a rival." 2 Hume has described this famous minister with great felicity in one short sentence,-"moderate in exercising power, not equitable in engrossing it." Kindhearted, jovial, and placable as Walpole was, he was yet a man with whom no person of high pretensions and high spirit could long continue to act. He had, therefore, to stand against an Opposition containing all the most accomplished statesmen of the age, with no better support than that which he received from persons like his brother Horace or Henry Pelham, whose industrious mediocrity gave no cause for jealousy, or from clever adventurers, whose situation and character diminished the dread which their talents might have

1

1 John Campbell, second Duke of Argyll, 1678-1743, continued the tradition of his house as the chief upholders of the Presbyterian cause in Scotland, supported the Whigs and voted for the Act of Union. He had entered the army in 1694 and distinguished himself under Marlborough, with whom he afterwards quarrelled. When Anne was dying he joined with the Duke of Somerset to recommend Shrewsbury as Treasurer, thus disconcerting the schemes of Bolingbroke and the Jacobites. Under George I. he became Commander-in-Chief in Scotland and fought the battle of Sheriffmuir in the rebellion of 1715. In the following year he was deprived of his command. Some time later he regained the King's favour and was created Duke of Greenwich. But as Macaulay intimates he would not submit to Walpole's supremacy. In 1740 he lost all his offices and went into avowed Opposition. When Walpole went out in 1742 Argyll was made Commander-in-Chief, but he resigned in a few months and died soon after.

2 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second, vol. i., p. 231.

Hume, Essays, "A Character of Sir Robert Walpole."

inspired. To this last class belonged Fox, who was too poor to live without office; Sir William Yonge,2 of whom Walpole himself said, that nothing but such parts could buoy up such a character, and that nothing but such a character could drag down such parts; and Winnington, whose private morals lay, justly or unjustly, under imputations of the worst kind.1

The discontented Whigs were, not perhaps in number, but certainly in ability, experience, and weight, by far the most important part of the Opposition. The Tories furnished little more than rows of ponderous foxhunters, fat with Staffordshire or Devonshire ale, men who drank to the King over the water,

1 Henry Fox (Lord Holland), see p. 28.

* William Yonge, Sir, d. 1755, entered Parliament in 1722 and uniformly supported Walpole, who made him a Commissioner of Revenue in Ireland in 1723 and in the following year a Commissioner of the Treasury. Along with Walpole Yonge lost his place on the death of George I., and presently returned with him, becoming a Commissioner of the Admiralty in 1728, a Commissioner of the Treasury in 1730 and Secretary at War in 1735. After Walpole's fall he made interest with the Pelhams, who appointed him Joint Vice-Treasurer of Ireland in 1746. He was a ready speaker and writer. It is not clear why he bore so bad a character. He was a favourite butt of Pope.

3 Thomas Winnington, 1696-1746, entered Parliament in 1726. As his opinions were flexible and his abilities great he soon obtained office, and became successively a Lord of the Admiralty, a Lord of the Treasury, Cofferer of the Household and Paymaster-General. In 1746 the King wished to make him Chancellor of the Exchequer, and after his death Horace Walpole described him as marked out to be Prime Minister. He was lax in private life.

The

But

The above passage is merely an expansion of a similar one in the essay on Horace Walpole. It may be said to imply a certain misconception. Revolution of 1688 and subsequent events had so much reduced the power of the Crown that the King could no longer act as the real head of the Government or give the necessary unity and continuity to the administration. Hence the rise of Cabinet Government which has substituted the Prime Minister for the monarch and involves the loyal subordination of all his colleagues to the Prime Minister. Walpole was the first statesman who could be termed a Prime Minister; Cabinet Government was only commencing to take shape and cabinet loyalty was as yet an unrecognised virtue. Tradition, law and current morals required no more of any counsellor of the Crown than loyalty to the King. So long as he was loyal he might express opinions at variance with the opinions of his leader and colleagues, he might give effect to those opinions by his vote and influence, he might even cabal for the supreme place. Such a political morality was at variance with the political conditions of the time. We need not therefore wonder that Walpole's colleagues should wish to take their own way or that Walpole should insist on getting rid of them. A modern Premier has no need to do as Walpole did, because he is the object of a fidelity and deference which Walpole could not expect. Distinguished members of either House feel no hesitation in subordinating themselves to the leader of their party in a manner which Walpole's contemporaries would have thought dishonest and servile, because the public expects such subordination and condemns unruliness. We may therefore conclude, not that Walpole was more excessively fond of power than other illustrious Parliamentary chiefs, but that he could carry on the Government only by enforcing a discipline which men of talent and spirit in general disdained because it was novel.

and believed that all the fundholders were Jews, men whose religion consisted in hating the Dissenters, and whose political researches had led them to fear, like Squire Western, that their land might be sent over to Hanover to be put in the sinkingfund. The eloquence of these zealous squires, the remnant of the once formidable October Club,1 seldom went beyond a hearty Aye or No. Very few members of this party had distinguished themselves much in Parliament, or could, under any circumstances, have been called to fill any high office; and those few had generally, like Sir William Wyndham, learned in the company of their new associates the doctrines of toleration and political liberty, and might indeed with strict propriety be called Whigs.

It was to the Whigs in Opposition, the Patriots, as they were called, that the most distinguished of the English youth who at this season entered into public life attached themselves. These inexperienced politicians felt all the enthusiasm which the name of liberty naturally excites in young and ardent minds. They conceived that the theory of the Tory Opposition and the practice of Walpole's Government were alike inconsistent with the principles of liberty. They accordingly repaired to the standard which Pulteney had set up. While opposing the Whig minister, they professed a firm adherence to the purest doctrines of Whiggism. He was the schismatic; they were the true Catholics, the peculiar people, the depositaries of the orthodox faith of Hampden and Russell, the one sect which, amidst the corruptions generated by time and by the long possession of power, had preserved inviolate the principles of the Revolution. Of the young men who attached themselves to this portion of the Opposition the most distinguished were Lyttelton and Pitt. When Pitt entered Parliament, the whole political world was

1 See vol. i., p. 531.

2 William Wyndham, 1687-1740, son of a Somerset baronet, was elected member for his native county in 1710 and became Secretary at War in Harley's Administration. In 1713 he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took part with Bolingbroke against Harley, spoke for the Schism Act, and after Bolingbroke's flight became the leader of the Tories. The Letter to Sir William Wyndham is, perhaps, the ablest of Bolingbroke's pamphlets. When Bolingbroke returned, Wyndham was the chief exponent of his views in Parliament. Like Bolingbroke Wyndham was a Tory without zeal for the Church of England and a Jacobite without belief in the divine right of kings.

3 George Lyttelton, first Baron Lyttelton, 1709-1773. who first entered the House of Commons in 1735. He joined the Opposition to Walpole, and after Wilmington's death took part with the Pelhams against Carteret. He became a Lord of the Treasury in 1744 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1755. In 1756 he was created a baron. An industrious, but not an entertaining author, he wrote a Life of Henry II., Dialogues of the Dead, etc.