"The Dunkerque affair was under discussion there. I have never seen such a blaze. The sitting lasting from one o'clock in the afternoon till three o'clock after midnight. There, the French were well abused. I noticed how far the frightful jealousy goes which exists between the two nations. M. Walpole attacked Bolingbroke in the most savage manner, and said that he had conducted the whole intrigue. Chevalier Wyndham defended him. M. Walpole related in reference to Bolingbroke, the story of a farmer, who, passing under a tree with his wife, found that a man who had been hanged there, still breathed. He cut him down and took him to his house and he revived. They discovered that this man had on the day before stolen their forks. So they said, 'The course of justice must not be opposed; he must be carried back whence we have taken him.'"
It was only in 1734, and under the threat which perhaps qualms of conscience made him fear, that Bolingbroke once again voluntarily exiled himself. Walpole had conceived a great financial scheme for the increase of indirect taxation or excise. The opposition violently pounced upon this unpopular project. The rumor spread that the excise would be general. "I declare," said Walpole, "that I never had the thought, and that no man to my knowledge has ever had the thought of proposing a general application of the excise. I have never dreamed of any duties except those on wines and tobacco, and that in consequence of the frequent complaints I have received from merchants themselves about the frauds which are daily committed in these two branches of commerce."
Public discontent and irritation were too vehement to be calmed by the moderation of Walpole: the minister prudently let the discussion drop. The queen had constantly supported Walpole. She had summoned one of the king's personal friends, Lord Scarborough, in order to consult him. "I answer for my regiment against the Pretender," said he, "but not against those who insist upon the excise." Tears came into the eyes of the princess. "Then," said she, "it must be renounced."
Emboldened by this negative victory, the chiefs of the opposition took up the question of septennial Parliaments. The duration of the legislature was approaching its termination. The attack was directed by Wyndham, who was covertly backed and instructed by Bolingbroke. It was against this cloaked and absent foe that Walpole rose with all the eloquence, temperate in form, impressive and haughty in effect, with which, on occasion, he so well knew how to overwhelm his adversaries. "Much has been said here of ministers arrogantly hurling defiances, of ministers destitute of all sense of virtue and honor: it appears to me, gentlemen, that with equal right, and more justly, I think, we may speak of anti-ministers and mock patriots, who never had either virtue or honor, and who are actuated only by envy or resentment. Let me suppose an anti-minister who regards himself as a man of such consequence, and endowed with such extensive parts, that he alone in the State is equal to the conduct of public affairs; and who stigmatizes as blunderers all those who have the honor to be engaged therein. Suppose that this personage has been lucky enough to enrol among his party men truly distinguished, wealthy, and of ancient family, as well as others of extreme views, arising from disappointed and envenomed hearts. Suppose all these men to be moved by him solely in respect to their political behavior, without real attachment for this chief whom they so blindly follow, and who is detested by the rest of humanity. We see this anti-minister in a country where he ought not to be, where he could not be without the exercise of an excessive clemency, yet employing all his efforts to destroy the source whence this mercy flowed. Let us suppose him in that country, continually occupied in contracting intimacies with the ambassadors of princes who are most hostile to his own; and if there should be a secret, the divulgence of which would be prejudicial to his country, disclosing it without hesitation to the foreign ministers who have applied to him to discover it. Finally, let us suppose that this anti-minister has travelled, and that at every court where he has been placed as minister, he has betrayed every confidence, as well as all the secrets of the countries through which he has passed; destitute as he is of faith and honor, and betraying every master whom he has served."
I have desired to give an idea of the violence of parliamentary discussion under George II., as well as of the deep-rooted animosity which existed between Walpole and Bolingbroke. The latter did not dare to face any revelations or more definite accusations. He soon quitted England, not to return as long as Walpole was in power. When he came back, in 1742, at the moment of his father's death, it was to establish himself in the country, in the house at Battersea, where he was born, and where he finally died, on the 17th of December, 1751, after the most stormy life, sadly devoted to unfortunate or disastrous enterprises, which were unscrupulously pursued with the resources of a rare and fruitful genius. "God, who has placed me here below," said he to Lord Chesterfield, in bidding him farewell, "will make of me what he will, after this; and he knows what is the best thing to do." All the irregularities of his life and all the inveterate doubts of his mind had never availed to snatch from the depths of the dying Bolingbroke's soul the hereditary faith in God which he had learned as a child at the knees of his mother, who had been piously attached to the principles of the old Dissenters.
The prolonged power of Walpole was menaced, and his authority seriously shaken. Troubles had broken out in Scotland. The escape of one smuggler and the punishment of another had aroused the populace of the capital, and caused that riot against Captain Porteous which forms one of the principal episodes of the Prison of Edinburgh.
Discord reigned in the royal family between King George II. and his eldest son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, as it had previously reigned between King George I. and his son. The queen shared the annoyance of her consort, and refused to see the prince, when, in the month of November, 1737, she was on her death-bed. "I hope that you will never desert the king," said she to Walpole. "It is to you that I commend him. Continue to serve with your accustomed fidelity." Walpole's regrets were bitter and sincere. He was losing an ally as certain as she was efficacious, at the moment when the violence of the attacks against him was increasing.