It was to the natural development and to the regular play of parliamentary government that England owed this repose, often laborious and difficult, solidly founded on the firmest bases during the long reign of the second Hanoverian monarch. Four notable ministries were to succeed each other round the throne of George II., the first and the last in the hands of men eminent in various ways, Robert Walpole and Lord Chatham: 1727-1741-1756-1760; directed from 1742 till 1744 by Lord Carteret, soon afterwards Lord Granville, and from 1744 till 1756 by the Duke of Newcastle and his brother Henry Pelham.
George II.
All called to face serious difficulties, great internal and external shocks, the ministers of George II., eloquent or commonplace, remained faithful to the king whom they served, and never afforded that example of treason and deplorable weaknesses which had shamefully marked the life of so many Statesmen during the last three reigns. There was conspiracy yet, but the conspirators no longer hid themselves in the royal palaces, at the head of armies or of public affairs. It was on the field of battle that the Stuarts were to play and lose their last game. At the death of George I. the fate of the new dynasty and of the protestant succession might, to superficial observation, have appeared uncertain and precarious. At the death of George II. the work had been accomplished; thenceforth revolutions were to be for England only a remembrance at once glorious and sad, without possible recurrence and without bitter traces. National victories would efface the last remnant of intestine strifes.
By the side of George II., on the throne still occupied by a half-foreign monarch, who spoke the language of his people with a pronounced accent, who was of slender appearance, and more brave in person than royal in tastes and habits, was seated a clever, moderate, wise and learned princess, with a semblance of pedantry, who was skilful, and very soon dominant in the government, without ever giving evidence of any presumption. Princess Caroline d'Anspach had often had to lament the infidelities of her husband; he remained attached to her, nevertheless, and her influence was constantly first with him. Robert Walpole had known how to anticipate this influence. He never omitted, for the benefit of the prince's favorite, the deference that he had displayed to the Princess of Wales. The queen did not forget it.
The first moment of the new reign had not been propitious to the powerful minister of George I. When he presented himself at the palace, in order to announce to the new monarch the death of the king his father, George II., scarcely awakened from his customary siesta, had brusquely replied to the minister's question, "Whom does your Majesty charge with the communications to the Privy Council?"—"Compton," said the king. In retiring to convey the royal command to his rival, thus designated as his successor, Walpole lost neither his coolness nor his firm resolution to govern his country for the longest possible period. "I am about to fall," he had just said to Sir William Young, "but I advise you not to throw yourself into a violent opposition, for I shall not be slow to rise again."
As a matter of fact, Walpole was not to fall. It was only the breath of royal disfavor that was to pass over him. Sir Spencer Compton, soon afterwards Lord Wilmington, an honest and capable man, but of dull wit and without facility of speech, as without ministerial experience, modestly requested Walpole to compose for him the communication with which the king had charged him. Walpole did so. The secret leaked out. At the same time the minister, momentarily superseded, proposed to the queen an increase of revenue for the king and a dowry for herself, which he believed himself sure of having voted by Parliament. Already well-disposed toward Walpole, Caroline knew how to cleverly prove to her husband the danger that he would find, at the commencement of his reign, in losing a powerful and popular minister by throwing him into opposition. Already the courtiers had abandoned Walpole, and crowded around Sir Spencer Compton. At the ceremony of hand-kissing, Lady Walpole "could scarcely force a passage between the disdainful backs and elbows of those who had flattered her the day before," writes her son Horace, in his Souvenirs. When the queen, perceiving her in the last ranks, exclaimed, "Ah! I see a friend down there," the crowd opened right and left. "In coming back," said Lady Walpole, "I might have walked over their heads, if I had desired." During thirteen years more Walpole was to exercise that authority of which he was secretly so jealous. "Sir Robert was moderate in the exercise of power," said Hume; "he was not just in seizing the whole of it." Walpole had already alienated Pulteney and Carteret; he was about to embroil himself with Townshend. The divisions of the Whig party were the work of his jealous contrivings. It had for long been draining its strength; its debility and downfall were one day to follow.
The attack especially directed against the foreign policy, soon began, and was hotly sustained in the House of Commons by Pulteney, for the time being at one with the Tories and with Sir William Wyndham; in the press and in the depths of parliamentary intrigues by Lord Bolingbroke, ever the implacable enemy of Walpole, who was obstinate in refusing him re-entrance into the House of Lords. The Treaty of Seville had just put an end to the dissensions with Spain (November, 1729). It was then, on the accomplishment of the Treaty of Utrecht, that the attacks of the patriots,—a name adopted by the Whigs who had gone into opposition—were brought to bear. The ministry was reproached with not having guarded against the demolition of Dunkerque, "I went the day before yesterday to Parliament," wrote Montesquieu in his "Notes on England," to the lower House.