1. Father and Son
IN SEPTEMBER, 1714, SEVEN WEEKS after Queen Anne died, the first king of a new royal House landed in England.
Sophia of Hanover, daughter of the Elizabeth Stuart who was once for a few months Queen of Bohemia, had been named by the Act of Settlement (1701) as successor to her cousin Anne. And ever after Sophia longed to outlive Anne, if only for one day, so that she might call herself Queen of England before she died. But she had been dead already some four months; so it was not to her but to her son George Lewis, now King George I, that the English crown descended.
George I was a foreigner by birth, connected with the old royal line only because his grandmother Elizabeth had been a daughter of James I. Nearly sixty persons, it was said, had a better title to the throne by descent. He was a foreigner, too, by breeding and education. The jealous Anne, indeed, had never allowed him to enter England. Thus he knew hardly more of English ways and English institutions than he knew of the English language, which was practically nothing at all. Further, having ruled Hanover for sixteen years with almost absolute power, he had had no training for the task of ruling England as a “constitutional king,” that is, a king with limited power, strictly controlled by Parliament. And he knew that few, if any, of his new subjects felt even the slightest liking for him. Already, indeed, they were violently jealous of his foreign friends and interests. And, till the very moment of Anne’s last illness, Bolingbroke had been working, with every hope of success, to put a different king upon the throne. Even now Bolingbroke still hoped, and George himself feared, and foreign statesmen quite expected, that “the fickle English” would soon send back their new ruler to his little German State.
Nor could George hope to win favour by his personal charms, for he had none. His face was plain, his expression lifeless, his bearing awkward, and his manners stiff. His habits were thrifty, even niggardly. His ignorance of English cut him off from most of his subjects. Few of his own ministers could talk to him in his own language. Walpole—the greatest of them all—had to discuss State affairs with him in Latin, which neither, perhaps, knew very well, and which, moreover, they pronounced in different ways!
As for his family, they hindered rather than helped his gaining popularity. His wife remained a prisoner in disgrace in Germany, and he was at variance with his son, who took her part.
Yet—unattractive, unromantic, and ungracious as George was—he had certain points not only excellent in themselves, but quite invaluable in his new position. He was courageous both in battle and in daily life. He was merciful to his enemies. He hated injustice and dishonesty. Above all, he had abundant sober common sense.
George II—king from 1727 to 1760—was in some ways more, and in others less, fortunate. Like George I, he hated his son and heir. But in this case the son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was a worthless creature, even if he did not quite deserve his mother’s description of him as “the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest beast in the whole world.” And, unlike George I, the king loved his wife, and owed more than tongue could tell to her faithful and sensible advice.
Again, though he too was a foreigner by birth, and much more at home in Hanoverian than in English business, yet he knew more than his father of the language and character and institutions of his English subjects. And, though he was short, and fidgety in his movements, his features were good and his expression lively—a great contrast to the dull plainness of his father’s face.
On the other hand, he was spiteful and abusive. He was always sneering at everyone round him. And his manner, even to those he really loved, was harsh and rough. The very virtues of punctuality and exactness, too, which were his pride, became hateful and ridiculous, to such an absurd length did he carry them. And his carefulness of money was so extreme that the only present he ever gave his greatest minister was—a cracked diamond! Yet, like his father, he was brave, honest, loyal to his friends, moderate, and blessed with much common sense.
Both kings, moreover, had the wit to see that, however unwillingly, they must accept certain very important checks on their own power. These checks were due virtue partly to the various laws and customs of government in England which are called “the English Constitution,” and partly to their personal ignorance of English politics. Both kings, too, though keenly interested in Hanover, placed their duty to England first. And both valued and trusted Robert Walpole, the one man in England who could make their throne secure, the man to whom, more even than to their own common sense or the folly of their Stuart rivals, the firm establishment of their dynasty within thirty years was due.
2. The Old Pretender
No greater contrast to the Georges can be imagined than the two “Pretenders,” Old and Young, the son and grandson of James II. Common sense was never very common in the Stuart princes, even in their prosperous days. And certainly none was shown by the Old Pretender when he made his great attempt to seize the British crown.
There were obstacles enough in any case to a restoration of the Stuart line. There was the memory of bitter quarrels in the seventeenth century between Stuart kings and Parliament. There was the anger caused by the alliance of exiled Stuart princes with the national enemy, France. There was the dread that a restored Stuart king would leave unpaid the thousands who had lent money to the English Government for the great wars of 1688-1713, since these wars had been fought largely to keep his family off the throne.
But perhaps all this might have been got over if the question of religion had not barred the way. For this was the greatest obstacle of all. The Pretenders were Roman Catholics, like James II, and it was much to their credit that they would not change their religion even to win back the crown. But the English Parliament had twice solemnly declared—in the Bill of Rights (1688) and in the Act of Settlement (1701)—that no Roman Catholic should ever reign in England. And on this point most Englishmen were agreed, however they might differ in other matters. Even Anne herself at last gave up her brother’s cause when she realized that he would never give up his religion.
Yet James not only remained a Roman Catholic himself, but led people to think that as king he would try to force all his subjects to be the same. Lastly, he chose the worst possible time for an ill-judged attempt to seize the crown by force. And in this attempt he disgusted all his friends by his lack of every quality that wins men’s loyalty and love.
It was in 1715 that he came to seek his kingdom, and it was then a year too late. Driven from France by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), he had fled to Lorraine, on the French border, and from that refuge had begged for aid from nearly every Government in Europe. But by the Treaty of Utrecht these very Governments had just recognized George I’s right to the English crown, and they were hardly ready as yet to break their promises. The Emperor gave no help at all. The Pope and the King of Spain gave only money, no ships or men. Louis XIV of France did indeed promise aid, but he died in September, 1715, and the new ruler of France had very strong reasons for keeping the peace with England. And, though Charles XII of Sweden was actually paid by the Pretender for attacking Newcastle-on-Tyne, the attack was never made.
Thus abroad everything went wrong. Nor was the situation at home much more encouraging. George’s troops in England were certainly few, his troops in Scotland very few indeed. Prominent men, too, like Bolingbroke and the popular Duke of Ormonde, knowing that George distrusted them, were working for James; and others, such as Marlborough, would join him if success seemed likely. But Ormonde, whose business it was to win over the army to the Pretender’s cause, had suddenly to flee abroad, for the Government discovered and defeated his plot for a rising in the West, and his two later attempts to land in England were both failures. And, though Bolingbroke went to Paris and was made James’s Secretary of State, he was never really trusted, and his advice was often disregarded.
When, too, on September 6th, James’s standard was actually raised in Scotland, it was against the wishes of his best advisers, perhaps even against his own orders. And the man who raised it was little likely to carry it to victory, for he was only the Earl of Mar, a jealous, unreliable man, nicknamed “Bobbing John” because he had already changed from side to side so often. Under his guidance the Jacobites quickly lost every advantage which they at first enjoyed over King George’s army under the Duke of Argyll. Mar began by wasting time in waiting for James at Perth, though he knew that Highlanders kept long inactive would always go home. Then, meeting Argyll’s far smaller force at Sheriffmuir, on November 13th, he contented himself with a drawn battle when he might have won a great victory. The old song well describes the fight:
Some say that we won, and some say that they won,
And some say that none won at all, man!
For Mar routed Argyll’s right wing, and Argyll did the same to Mar’s right wing, and then Mar, by retreating, left Argyll all the advantages of a victory.
Meanwhile Thomas Forster, an M.P. for Northumberland, with the young Earl of Derwentwater and others, started a rebellion in the North of England. They joined a second Jacobite army in Scotland, and with it marched southwards into Lancashire.
But everything went wrong. Five hundred Highlanders deserted, refusing even to cross the English border. In England itself only a few individuals, instead of many thousands, joined the invaders. Forster was made commander, not because he knew how to command, but because, being a Protestant, he might be more acceptable to Englishmen than a Roman Catholic general. And he was useless. He marched to Preston, and the militia fled before him; for they were armed only with pikes. But he took no proper steps to defend the town, and on the very day of Sheriffmuir he surrendered to an army which only his own stupidity had allowed to hem him in.
In Scotland more disasters followed, and now every day Mar’s forces dwindled and Argyll’s increased. The rebellion had obviously failed. Yet it was just at this point that the Pretender himself at last appeared! He landed at Peterhead on January 2, 1716; he found on every side disappointment and despair; and his own gloomy countenance only depressed still more the spirits of his followers. Soon Perth had to be abandoned, and it became plain that James’s presence now merely hindered the Jacobites from making their peace with the Government. So on February 4th he sailed away again, and thus “the ‘15″ came to an untimely end.
The rebels quickly dispersed, and George and his ministers showed great forbearance in punishing them. Few were executed: even those sentenced to death were often spared. But two lords, Kenmure and Derwentwater, were beheaded, and a third, Lord Nithsdale, was saved only by the bravery of his wife. He escaped disguised as a woman, in clothes which she herself had cleverly smuggled into his prison.
Meanwhile James became once more an exile on the Continent. Driven from France and Lorraine, he retired at last to Rome. There he married a Polish princess, whose jealous temper made the rest of his life a misery to him. And by her he became the father of the last two descendants of James II—Charles Edward, “the Young Pretender,” and Henry, Cardinal of York. Charles Edward was as unlike the Georges as his father, but in his case it was the charm rather than the folly of the Stuart race that made the contrast. The story of his adventure in 1745, however, belongs to a later chapter.
3. Kings and Councillors
The most important figure in England for a generation after 1714 was neither stolid king nor stupid Pretender, neither a Hanoverian nor a Stuart prince, but Robert Walpole, the Norfolk squire whose great fame has earned for this period the title of “The Age of Walpole.”
This importance of the minister rather than of the king had begun in Stuart days. Ever since the Restoration the management of national affairs had belonged far less than before to the king and far more to his ministers and Parliament.
Parliament, and especially the House of Commons, had indeed gained immense power. It met every year. It completely controlled taxation. It alone made laws. And it demanded that the king should be advised by men whose names it knew and on whose good conduct and ability it could rely.
It had not, indeed, been wholly successful on the last point. It had tried to make the king bring all important business to be discussed publicly in the large Privy Council which was supposed to advise him. It had even tried so to arrange matters that the advice given to the king by every councillor might be known. But it had failed. The Privy Council had lost all real power, and all important affairs were managed by a small body of councillors, chiefly ministers holding high office, called the Cabinet. And the Cabinet debated and voted secretly, so that not even the Commons could pry into its doings.
Yet, as Parliament met constantly, and the king depended on the House of Commons for money, he had at any rate to choose ministers who by some means or other could manage to get on with it. The means, certainly, were often bad. Bribing of Members of Parliament with well-paid offices, pensions, and the like, had been growing steadily ever since 1660, and many voted for the Government only because of what they got from it. Yet such corruption had its limits. There were many things which bribes could not do. No ministers could safely act in a way really detested by the House of Commons, and no king could long employ ministers to whom the House was really hostile.
The change of dynasty in 1714 lessened still further the power of the Crown. The Jacobite plottings of Bolingbroke injured the whole Tory party, of which he was the head. The king inclined to think all Tories disloyal, and their enemies did their best to make him think so. Thus his choice of ministers was still further narrowed: not only must they be men agreeable to the Commons, but they must all be Whigs.
Again, George I, being ignorant of English, had to depend greatly on the knowledge and advice of his ministers, and gave up attending Cabinet meetings, since he understood nothing that was said there. So the king no longer shared in the discussions of the ministers, or helped to guide their decisions. The result was not merely to lessen the royal power; for, as some one had to preside in the Cabinet, and the king was not there, a chance was now given for a clever and powerful man to take the lead in all public matters, and make himself a “Prime,” or chief, Minister. Thus the office of Prime Minister grew up. And the first Prime Minister was Walpole.
1. Robert Walpole
ROBERT WALPOLE WAS BORN IN 1676. He was the fifth of nineteen children, but by the death of the eldest son he became heir to his father at the age of twenty-two. His father, another Robert Walpole, was a Norfolk squire and a Member of Parliament, with landed property worth over £2,000 a year. Robert the elder combined politics with farming and hunting, and taught his son to share in all his doings. And, when he was twenty-four, young Robert married the wealthy and beautiful grand-daughter of a Lord Mayor, and on his father’s death, soon afterwards, succeeded both to his estate and to his seat in Parliament.
Under Anne he held more than one public office, and learned at least one lesson which he never forgot. The Whig Government in which he served prosecuted Dr. Sacheverell, a Tory clergyman, for preaching against the Revolution of 1688. The prosecution succeeded, but caused such a storm of popular fury that Walpole would never, to the end of his days, do anything against the Church of England.
When the Tories came into power, in Anne’s last years, he would not join them: in fact, he led the opposition to their policy. So, to make him harmless, they imprisoned him in the Tower on a charge of corruption, which he considered baseless. But the chief result was that, when he came out, he opposed them more violently than ever. He attacked their doings both at home and abroad, particularly the Acts against Dissenters and the Treaty of Utrecht. And he was still opposing them when Anne died.
But the accession of George I brought back the Whigs to office; and Walpole now became Paymaster of the Forces, which meant wealth, and played a leading part in Parliament, which meant power, and was presently raised to be First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, which meant a chief place in the Ministry. Owing to a squabble among the Whigs, he was, indeed, soon out of office again, and attacking the Government as hotly as ever. But in 1720 he rejoined it, and for the next twenty years he was really the leading statesman in England. Thus the Age of Walpole now really began.
In appearance and tastes Walpole was a thorough country squire. He was hale and hearty. His manner was frank, genial, even boisterous. His laughter was natural and jolly; so said friend and foes alike, though his foes added that his “everlasting half-smile” was also half a sneer. He loved field sports; he drank deeply; he hunted all his life, even when he had grown heavy and stout; and he used the language of the stable and the hunting-field in the Council Chamber and the Parliament Hall.
Yet he was neither uneducated nor without artistic tastes. He certainly spoke with a strong Norfolk accent; he considered authors (not without reason) “needy scribblers” who could be hired to defend any cause; and he despised musicians as “a pack of fiddlers.” But his talk and his letters were sprinkled with Latin quotations as well as sporting phrases, and of pictures he was not only a keen but a judicious collector.
Yet again, he was a first-rate financier, extraordinarily clever at figures, and an excellent man of business. And, lastly, he had that comfortable temper which concerns itself far more with present facts than with future chances. So he had interests in common with both Tory squires and Whig merchants, and a temper specially suited both to his nation and to his age.
2. Sleeping Dogs
The Age of Walpole was not for England a time of stirring events, either at home or abroad. Rather it was a time of rest and preparation. It was a time of rest after the exhausting struggle with the France of Louis XIV, in the Netherlands and Spain, with which the Stuart period had closed. It was a time of preparation for that hardly less exhausting struggle with the France of Louis XV, in America and India, with which a new period was presently to open.
For various reasons the French Government just now did not want war; and, as Walpole was at least equally opposed to fighting, his rule was marked by almost uninterrupted peace. A Jacobite invasion and a commercial panic ushered it in; a commercial war, opening the way for a second Jacobite invasion, followed it; but in the interval there was rest and quiet. Peace, in fact, was the supreme object of Walpole’s policy, for he saw that at the moment it was the one essential thing. The country required it, for it had just passed through the Revolution of 1688 and the long and wearing French war, and needed time to recover. The new dynasty, too, had reason to wish for it, for peace and prosperity, and the absence of heavy war taxes, might make its subjects willing to accept its rule, while war would certainly give its enemies opportunities for insurrection and invasion. So Walpole never meddled in European affairs if he could help it. He avoided at all costs a war with France, which would have meant a Jacobite rising supported by French arms. And he kept England, to the best of his power, steadily and peaceably minding her own business.
But this was not all. Peace meant the absence not only of war abroad but also of strife at home. And, if this was to be gained, no burning questions must be raised, no old wounds reopened, no old grievances revived: no class and no religious body of importance must be irritated. “Let sleeping dogs lie!” This famous phrase summed up the chief ideas of Walpole’s policy at home and abroad.
Such a policy had, of course, its drawbacks. Few reforms can be made without arousing at least some opposition: many must cause for a time great popular excitement. And such reforms, speaking generally, Walpole’s policy forbade him to attempt. He could make no change that might disturb the public peace: he must leave even undoubted evils alone till a more convenient season. So he dropped his plan of reforming the Customs system when the country grew excited. And—remembering Dr. Sacheverell—he never dared even to propose a repeal of the laws against Dissenters, though he fully admitted their injustice. Thus “Let sleeping dogs lie!” had to mean “Let ill alone!” as well as “Let well alone!” and so Walpole’s rule was almost barren of reforming laws.
For this reason the Age of Walpole has earned a bad name in history. It has been abused as an age of low morals and widespread corruption; an age when high ideals and enthusiasms were scorned and admitted evils were contentedly accepted; an age in which the national character was degraded. And to some extent the charge is just. There was much corruption in the State, and against this Pitt and the “Patriots” presently protested. There was much sloth and half-heartedness in the Church, and against this John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and other “Methodists,” fought in the famous “Methodist Movement,” which ended in establishing many new religious bodies outside the national church. And Walpole himself reformed neither Church nor State.
Only it must be remembered that Walpole did not create the abuses: he merely put up with them. He did not rejoice at political corruption, but—finding it the custom—he made use of it. He never said of men in general (as has been so often asserted) that “every man has his price,” but he saw through and despised the hypocrites who pretended to be shocked at his bribery, and yet would have supported him if only he had bribed them largely enough. He was not even indifferent to the evils round him: only he thought that just then discord would be a greater evil still.
3. Commerce and Quarrels
If Walpole’s age had no very exciting events, it was none the less a time of progress and prosperity, especially in commerce. To commerce, indeed, the habit of minding one’s own business is peculiarly useful, and the development of trade was one of the chief features of the period. Almost all the leading questions of the day were commercial. Walpole himself came to power through the commercial panic known as the South Sea Bubble. His most famous scheme, the unsuccessful Excise Bill, was meant to help commerce by reforming taxation. And the Spanish war which caused his downfall sprang from disputes as to the commercial rights of Englishmen in Spanish lands.
For England had now really begun her career as a great trading nation. Marlborough’s wars themselves had been fought largely to secure for Englishmen the right of trading with the Spanish colonies in the New World, from which Spain wished to shut out every foreigner. And of the gains made at the peace none were more prized than this. Spain certainly granted as little as she possibly could. One English ship of 600 tons might go once a year to Panama, and for thirty years the English South Sea Company alone might import slaves into the Spanish colonies; but that was all.
To Englishmen in the eighteenth century, however, as in the sixteenth, Spanish America seemed to hold boundless wealth, nor did they much care what means they used to snatch a share of it. The one ship at Panama had to do the work of ten—for, as fast as her cargo was unladed by day, she was filled up again from other ships under cover of night. And elsewhere English ships sailed and English traders pushed their wares without even the pretence of a treaty right to justify them, but with all the insolent daring of Elizabeth’s “sea dogs.”
The Spaniards tried in vain to enforce their laws by violence: they succeeded only in provoking Englishmen to a violent revenge. So, while English prisoners worked in irons on Spanish soil, Spaniards were sold as slaves in English colonies. Meanwhile the Governments at home—in Spain and England—were apparently either unwilling or unable, or both unwilling and unable, to control their subjects. The English Government, especially, knew too well the value of the smuggling trade with South America to do anything more towards checking it than was necessary to put off actual war.
4. The South Sea Bubble
But, long before these quarrels ended in war, the South Sea Company brought trouble of another kind upon the country. The directors or managers of this trading association started in 1720 a great scheme in connection with the National Debt. The scheme was not in itself absurd, but the directors greatly exaggerated the profits that could be made by it. Public opinion exaggerated them still more.
And presently the idea that money could be made so easily produced a wild fever of “speculation” throughout the country. Money was lent to any and every company formed for trading or other purposes, every lender hoping for quick and enormous gains. Thousands readily paid seven or eight times the real value of a share in the South Sea Company itself. And, in the general excitement, many men (some merely foolish, but more dishonest) invited the public to subscribe largely also to other companies, which were always failures and often simply frauds. Sometimes, reckoning on the mad gambling spirit that possessed the nation, they did not even trouble to hide the folly of their schemes. One man asked for £1,000,000 to make a “wheel for a perpetual motion.” Another proposed to import jackasses from Spain, “as if,” some one said, “we had not plainly jackasses enough already!” And a third actually obtained thousands of pounds without even stating his purpose.
Such madness could only be short-lived, and the end soon came—the nation recovered its senses. Those who had paid so highly for shares in “bubble” companies were thankful to get even a little of their money back. And all the weak points in the South Sea Company’s own scheme were exposed. But—short as the “bubble” was—its bursting ruined hundreds. Some of the king’s ministers were found to have been guilty of bribery and corruption in the matter, and therefore were disgraced.
And it was to meet this crisis—which he had always prophesied—that Walpole was called back to power. For he was “the man who had no equal for figures,” the only statesman, indeed, that business men trusted. His settlement of the matter did not, of course, do away with all the suffering—the foolish and the unfortunate still had room to grumble; but probably all that was possible was done.
1. Early Dangers
FROM 1721 TO 1727 WALPOLE’S power was never shaken. George I looked on him as a man who could “turn stones into gold,” and resolved never to part with him while he was willing to serve. Yet he was not the only important minister. For three years Lord Cartaret looked after England’s relations with foreign countries: then Walpole’s own brother-in-law—Lord Townshend—seemed to hold the first place. “The firm,” Walpole himself said, was “Townshend and Walpole,” not yet “Walpole and Townshend.”
And George I’s death in 1727 threatened to destroy Walpole’s power altogether. For George II, hating his father, also hated his father’s ministers, and used to call Townshend “a choleric blockhead,” the Duke of Newcastle “an impertinent fool,” and Walpole himself “a rogue and rascal.” Three things, however, saved the situation. The new minister could not even write the king’s speech to Parliament without Walpole’s help. Walpole himself pleased the new king by securing from Parliament a larger income for the Royal Family. Above all, the new queen, Caroline, who really guided her husband while seeming to obey him, believed that Walpole alone could govern England, and that his chief enemies were “the greatest liars and knaves in the kingdom.”
So Walpole was once again, as Bolingbroke said, “the brazen image which the king had set up.” And now he gradually turned out all those ministers who would not readily obey him. It was characteristic of him that he would never share power with others in any department of State business where he interfered at all. And as time went on he took one fresh department after another under his control, and overthrew every rival. Finally, in 1730, he quarrelled with Townshend, who managed foreign affairs, and Townshend’s retirement left him practically supreme. But only three years later came the struggle over the famous Excise Bill.
2. The Greatest Struggle
The customs system in Walpole’s days was both burdensome and wasteful. Enormous taxes had to be paid by merchants on the tea and coffee, wine and tobacco, which they brought into English ports. Thus trade was seriously hampered. Yet these taxes were constantly evaded. Bands of desperate smugglers, backed by the sympathy of all the country-side, took advantage of dark nights and rugged coasts to set the law at defiance, and brought the goods to land at places where there were no custom-houses to interfere with them. And, if the revenue officers tried to stop this and enforce the law, they ran great risk of injury to life or limb. Not unnaturally, they often preferred to accept a share of the smugglers’ profits as a bribe to make them shut their eyes and hold their tongues. Thus, after all, the national Treasury gained but little.
There were two possible remedies. The taxes themselves might be lowered so much that smuggling to escape them would not be worth the risk of capture and punishment,—a plan which would mean, at first at any rate, a further loss to the Treasury. Or, the method of collecting the taxes might be altered: instead of “Customs,” i.e. taxes paid at the port where the goods arrived, there might be an “Excise,” i.e. a tax paid only when they were actually sold by the importers to buyers in the country, which would be far harder to escape. It was this second plan that Walpole adopted. He applied it successfully to tea and coffee, and afterwards to salt. Then he proposed to extend it to wine and tobacco. But here he met an unexpected difficulty.
For years his enemies had been increasing. Townshend, on leaving office, had retired quietly to Norfolk, and occupied himself with turnip growing and other useful agricultural experiments, which gained him the nickname of “Turnip Townshend.”
But other ministers turned out by Walpole were less easily contented. They vowed revenge. They joined hands with Walpole’s other enemies—with the Tories, with Bolingbroke (now back in England, but still kept out of his estates and out of Parliament by Walpole’s influence), with William Pitt and the other young men who were always attacking Walpole’s corruption. So the minister had to face a host of foes. They opposed him in Parliament. They reviled him in the Press, especially in their famous newspaper—The Craftsman—which perhaps first showed how great the influence of the Press might be. By speeches and pamphlets, by newspaper letters and caricatures, by every means they could think of, they tried to destroy his power and his reputation.
To these men the Excise scheme was a perfect godsend. For when the ordinary Englishman of Walpole’s day heard the word “Excise” he thought at once of a despotic Government, fit only for slaves—or Frenchmen!—to endure, and of a host of meddling officials prying into every detail of his daily business. Walpole’s scheme meant really neither one thing nor the other. But Englishmen, then, at any rate, could be worked up into such a state of excitement over a mere word that attempts to explain it would be simply useless.
Walpole’s enemies well understood this, and they took full advantage of the people’s ignorance. They represented Walpole’s motives to be everything that they were not. They held him up to popular hatred as a tyrant and extortioner, seeking to destroy the liberties of England and enrich himself by wringing money out of his miserable fellow-countrymen.
Their plan succeeded to an extent which even now is hard to understand. It was not only that mobs gathered to threaten the ministers and assault Walpole, or that Walpole’s effigy was burnt in countless bonfires. Even sober men joined in the campaign. The citizens of London actually asked to be heard in Parliament against the Bill, and their petition had so many signatures that a long train of coaches was needed to carry it to Westminster. And the feeling was almost as strong within as without the walls of Parliament. Many of Walpole’s own followers, expecting his downfall and wishing to please his successors, deserted to the enemy. Further, not only the minister himself, but the king and queen who relied on his advice, were assailed with insults and abuse. Indeed, grave fears were felt that the struggle might actually overthrow the House of Hanover.