Sir Robert Walpole, the minister, had endeavoured to bring the precious couple together on friendly terms, but they would often quarrel in his presence, and appeal to Sir Robert, until the frequency with which they invoked the support of their referee, by loud exclamations of "So help me Bob!" turned the phrase into a proverb, which is to this day prevalent among the lower and more energetio classes of the community. When George the Second came to the throne, he expressed his desire to "keep on" Sir Robert Walpole as minister, if the situation continued to suit that individual, whose acknowledgment that he was "very comfortable." concluded the arrangement for the continuance of the existing Government.
Walpole was one of the most dishonest ministers that ever lived, and it was his policy to resort to corruption of the grossest kind to ensure success; "for," as he would sometimes say, "the manure must not be spared, if you wish for an abundant harvest." He accordingly laid it on so extravagantly thick, that the expenses of the cultivation of his political connections was prodigious, and the national resources were frequently dipped into, for the purpose of serving the personal objects of the minister. The sinking fund had a tremendous hole made in it, where—to steal a figure from the plumber's art—a waste-pipe was inserted, and laid on to the pocket of the premier, who, collecting the floating capital into a private reservoir of his own, turned it on among his creatures with great prodigality. To meet the drain that was going on, new taxes were imposed, or in other words, the people were treated as if they had been an Artesian well, and were bored to the most frightful extent for the sort of currency by which a liquidation of the liabilities of the State was to be effected.
The nation, recognising a swindling spirit in its rulers, gave symptoms of the imitative mania which invariably causes the vices of the great to be copied by the little. Speculations of the wildest and most dishonest nature were set on foot among every class, from the highest to the lowest, and there is no question that the Rogue's March would have been the most appropriate National Anthem for the period. From quiet fraud, the country soon fell into downright robbery, and the people got into the habit of plundering each other in the thoroughfares, without going through the formality—common in our own days of issuing a prospectus, and advertising a project. The first advertisement generally came upon the victim in the shape of a blow upon the head in the public streets; the preliminary deposit was extorted from him in the shape of the first article of value that could be easily snatched away, and the calls were exacted in rapid succession by a demand upon every one of his pockets. There was no hope of protection from the police, for the members of the force were too busy in robbing on their own account to bother themselves about the robberies that were being committed by others. It was, in fact, a case of Every Man his Own Pickpocket; and protection, being everybody's business, was soon considered nobody's business, until the whole kingdom was exposed to a sort of daily scramble, in the course of which Shakespeare's description of Iago's purse, "'Twas mine, 'tis his," was every hour realised. Things were, of course, in a most unsettled state, for nobody thought of settling anything—not even a washing bill—during the existence of the universal plunder system, and a riot every other day was the ordinary average of popular turbulence. Even the Scotch grew warm, and becoming conscientiously opposed to the legal infliction of death, they attended the execution of a smuggler to make a great moral demonstration against capital punishment. In the excess of their philanthropic sympathy with the convict, they began pelting the authorities, who were on the point of being murdered, when John Porteus, the captain of the guard, interfered to save the lives of his comrades. Some time afterwards, the philanthropists, to prove their consistent abhorrence of the punishment of death, seized upon Porteus, who had officiated in keeping the peace at the execution, and hanged him at the Salt Market.
In the year 1737 the queen died, and the king sent up a piteous howl, though he had ill-used her majesty on many occasions; but it was well remarked by a philosopher of the period, that by the sincerity with which George the Second wept her dead, he almost teaches us to forget the severity with which he wapt her living.
The year 1740 was rendered remarkable by a severe frost, which confined Father Thames to his bed with a dreadful cold, until the 17th of February, from the 26th of December previous. A fair was held on the ice, but amid these rejoicings the watermen were dissatisfied at being deprived of their ordinary fare, and the fishermen complained that they had been able to net nothing during the frost's continuance.
The disputes of the Continent furnished occupation, as usual, for English troops and English money, nor was it long before a difference between the Elector of Bavaria and Maria Theresa caused the Earl of Stair to be sent to keep his eyes open, with sixteen thousand men, in the lady's interest. Stair, after staring at sixty thousand Frenchmen face to face for some time, began to think he had a very poor look out, though joined by the king himself, and his son, the Duke of Cumberland. The whole three of them got beaten like so many old sacks by Marshal Saxe at the battle of Fontenoy. Cumberland, who had put his best leg forward, got it badly wounded. George rode along the lines—at the back, we believe—urging on the soldiers to fight for their king, while Stair seems to have been lost sight of, or perhaps to have run away, though we must admit that this flight of Stairs must be considered apocryphal.
While these disasters were going on abroad, a correspondence was being kept up between the Pretender, James Stuart, and his British friends, who promised that if he or his son Charles Edward would effect a landing in Scotland, there should be a good supply of horses and carriages; but one would imagine his friends were a parcel of jobmasters, by the quality of the aid they tendered, and indeed a job was their object, for all but the most unprincipled of the party were for abandoning the hopeless project.
Though James himself was a bird far too venerable to be attracted by Caledonian chaff, his son was sanguine enough to hope that by coming over to be met by a few glass coaches and hackney chariots, his cause would be aided. He wrote to say when he might be expected, and without waiting for an answer, he put to sea in a small frigate. He was joined by the Elizabeth, a sixty-gun ship, when an English liner, called the Lion, appeared on the foaming main, and an engagement commenced, which rendered it necessary for the Elizabeth to go into Brest harbour for refuge. At the end of eighteen days he reached the Hebrides, but the prospect was so wretched that the few adherents who met him recommended him very strongly to be off again as speedily as possible. Charles Edward was, however, obstinate, and on the 11th of August, 1745, he took out of his portmanteau and unfurled the banner of the Stuarts in the pass of Glenfinnan. Attempts were made to obtain recruits, but they poured, or rather dribbled in so slowly, that the whole insurrection might have been broken up had it been nipped in the bud; but while Sir John Cope, the commander of the king's forces, was capering about the hills, and dragging his army of flats across the mountains, the young Charles Edward gained time enough to add to the strength of his company. Cope not coming up to cope with the rebels, they pushed on to Perth and Stirling, but they soon made an acquisition of still more sterling value, by taking possession of Edinburgh. Here the young prince, who had landed only with seven adherents, found himself at the head of four thousand men, most of whom had neither arms nor discipline, but brimming over with the froth of enthusiasm, they presented to their chief a refreshing aspect.
Sir John Cope, having fumbled his way out of the hills, had got to Preston among the pans, where he was seized with a panic, and being set upon by the Scotch, was utterly routed. Returning to Edinburgh after his success Prince Charles Edward had King James proclaimed in the usual form; and the King of France, who had stood aloof while the result was doubtful, sent over a small parcel of arms and a few packets of powder, by way of encouragement. He promised also that a French army should soon follow the arms, for Charles Edward had no soldiers to match the matchless matchlocks that had arrived from the French sovereign. Trusting to the word of his Gallic majesty, the young Pretender ventured to cross the border in a blue bonnet, attended by a large body of adherents in the same interesting coiffure, and on the 29th of November, 1745, he fixed his headquarters at Manchester.