Walpole's forebodings were speedily fulfilled. Not only, as we have seen, was the Jacobite party at once again called to life, but his expeditions against Spain were by no means great successes. Anson indeed, although all his other ships were lost, made several successful attacks upon treasure-ships, captured Paita, and succeeded in bringing 'The Centurion' safe home after a circumnavigation of the globe. But Vernon, though successful in taking Porto Bello (when his conduct was vociferously contrasted by the Opposition with that of Hozier in 1726),[5] was repulsed with heavy loss in an assault on Carthagena. France had become thoroughly hostile, and when, on the 20th of October 1740, the Emperor Charles VI. died, it became evident that the war would shortly become European. In spite, however, of these proofs of Walpole's foresight, in spite of his success against Mr. Sandys' motion, the charges which had been brought against him had such an effect at the next election that the Opposition found themselves with much increased strength, and it became pretty plain that the Government would have but a very small majority. The session opened with a series of close divisions. The Opposition succeeded in carrying their Chairman of Committees against the Government candidate, and when he found Walpole resigns. 1742. himself at last defeated on the Chippenham election petition, Walpole took the resolution of resigning. A few days later he gave up all his places, and was made Lord Orford.
Thus closed the career of the statesman who for twenty years had been the sole guide of English politics. It is remarkable how few great measures can be traced to him; but he probably displayed true wisdom in allowing all reforms, however much they may have been required, to remain for a time in abeyance. The one thing which England required was rest. The last hundred years had been one continual scene of political turmoil. During the whole of that period the Revolution had been slowly working itself out, and the English Constitution had been changing. The power had gradually shifted from the King to the House of Commons. The ministry had ceased to be a body of secretaries, to whom was indeed intrusted the chief management of all national affairs, but who, inasmuch as they were still in theory, and in a great degree in practice, merely called upon to execute the King's commands, might be chosen indiscriminately from all parties. Instead of this it had become, what it has practically ever since been, a Committee of the majority in the House of Commons. In a social point of view, during much of the same period, England had been perplexed by a choice of masters, and in some degree by a choice of religions. Walpole seems thoroughly to have understood this position, and to have set himself steadily to work to complete and give stability to the changes which had been going on. He had seen, that far more important than any further improvements to the Constitution was the establishment on a firm footing of what had already been done. His chief object was therefore to make himself absolute master of the House of Commons. For this purpose he used means which we should now consider disgraceful. He is reported to have acted on the principle that every man had his price. He steadily opposed all efforts for the exclusion of pensioners, not from a wish to increase the power of the Crown, but because he wanted to secure the power of the minister, who he saw must henceforward be the real governor of England. He opposed the Peerage Bill because it threatened to increase the power of the Lords as against the Commons. He persistently refused all attempts at coalition (such as had been contemplated by Stanhope and subsequently proposed by Bolingbroke), because he wanted the ministry to be the representatives of the party which had the majority in the House, and of that party only. He kept a tight hand throughout his administration upon the Jacobites, conscious that the security of the reigning house was the only way of calming the uneasiness which all classes felt while they had any choice of rulers offered them. For similar reasons, with regard to religion, he refused to listen to any propositions for the relief of Roman Catholics, which Stanhope had also contemplated; and still further to calm religious discords by the sense of one strong paramount Church of England, he also refused all concessions to the Dissenters, although they systematically supported him. In saying, however, that the power had passed to the House of Commons, we must be careful not to regard the House of Commons as a popular assembly. The next phase of our history, the complement to that part of the Revolution which we have now passed, is the struggle of the people to get possession of their own House. At the time of which we are speaking the House of Commons was so filled with nominees of great lords, the electoral body was so limited, and the distribution of seats so arbitrary, that the House of Commons could in no way be regarded as a fair representation of the people, and the great Whig majority rested not on the liberal feeling of the nation, but upon an oligarchy of great Whig nobles. In his foreign policy Walpole was influenced by similar principles. Though the Peace of Utrecht was a Tory peace, its maintenance, and that of the balance of power it had established, was his chief object. Anything was better than that England should be engaged in war. War at once opened the door for Jacobite hopes. War at once touched that material prosperity which was to be the surest claim of gratitude to the reigning house. Moreover, as a financier, Walpole hated war. It was in this capacity, if we set aside his general ability and skill in management, that Walpole was greatest. We have seen how prudently he re-established credit after the bursting of the South Sea bubble, and how wise was his plan in his ill-fated Excise Bill. If some of his measures (as the Salt Tax) were dictated by political rather than economical necessities, it is yet certain that he inspired universal confidence, and owed much of his power to the support of the moneyed interest. His personal character, like that of most of his contemporaries, was not good. A large, coarse-looking person did not belie the coarseness of his tastes. He drank freely, joked coarsely, and had more than one natural child. Although in one of his speeches he plumes himself on having never been charged with corruption, his private fortune was certainly much increased by his ministry, and if we except his collection of pictures at Houghton, there is no sign that he had any appreciation of literature or of the arts. His ignorance of literature, and his contempt for it, is indeed notorious. He spent vast sums of money in purchasing the services of pamphleteers; scarcely one of them was worth anything. He seems to have regarded writing like any other trade, as being capable of being purchased by the piece. Patronage to literary men he systematically refused; we therefore find all the able writers of the time ranged on the side of the Opposition; and it is for the same reason perhaps that the worst points of his character are those which are more commonly known.
The chief fault of Walpole had been his jealousy of talent; on his fall there was no one in the ministry of sufficient influence to take up the reins which had fallen from his hands. Had there been any The new ministry under Wilmington. great difference of principle between him and the Opposition, a complete change of ministry would naturally have resulted. But both the Government and the Opposition had been in the main Whigs. Any man of commanding intellect might have kept the late ministry together. As it was, a sort of coalition was made. Pulteney, it is difficult to say why, avoided the responsibility of the Premiership, and withdrew into insignificance in the Upper House as Lord Bath. The nominal head of the new Government was Wilmington, that same dull man who had for a moment thought to supersede Walpole at the beginning of the reign. Under him many of the old Cabinet were retained; Newcastle, Hardwicke, and Young keeping their offices. The new element was represented by Argyle, who was reinstated as Master of the Ordnance, Carteret, who succeeded Lord Harrington as Secretary, and Sandys, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of Tories there appeared none, and Chesterfield and Pitt were excluded from the arrangement.
So slight a change in the construction of the Government seemed but a poor termination to the fierce opposition to which Walpole had been subjected. In fact, the rivalry had been one of persons Character of the new ministry. and not of principles. The ministry were compelled indeed, by pressure from without excited by their own clamours, to institute a Committee to inquire into the conduct of the great Prime Minister. But though it consisted principally of his personal enemies, too many interests were at stake to render their task easy; and when their report came, it appeared so trumpery, when compared with the charges which had been lavished upon the minister in Parliament, that it was a mere object of ridicule. It seemed as though the system of Walpole was after all to be continued. Many of his followers still remained in the Cabinet, as the Pelhams (Newcastle and his brother Henry Pelham), and Yorke, Lord Hardwicke, and even the virtual Prime Minister, his enemy Carteret, was obliged by stress of circumstances to adopt that very Hanoverian policy which had so often been laid to the charge of the late minister. Carteret was a man of genius, but of irregular life, and so capricious, and sudden in his actions, that his administration has been called the drunken administration. Disregarding home patronage for the higher and more exciting work of foreign diplomacy, he found his influence gradually and surely passing into the hands of the Pelhams. It was necessary for him at all hazards to secure the King's friendship; he therefore allowed 16,000 Hanoverians to be taken into English pay, and it was strange to hear Lord Bath, and Sandys, the accuser of Walpole, upholding the Hanoverian connection.
Pelham succeeds Wilmington. 1743.
A ministry which showed itself thus inconsistent with its assertions when out of office, and in which the elements of disunion were so evident, could not last long. The death of Wilmington (1743), the nominal Prime Minister, was the signal for its dissolution. The candidates for the Premiership were Pulteney on the one hand, supported by the talents of Carteret, and by the favour which this minister's newly-found interest for Hanover had given him with the King; and on the other hand Pelham, as representative of the party of Walpole, and backed by the influence which he still possessed. The question was settled in favour of Pelham, who, though without commanding abilities and constitutionally timid, possessed much of his late leader's love of quiet and power of management. Carteret continued for some time in power under his new chief; but their union could never be cordial, and before the close of 1744, Carteret—who had by continual flattery of the King's weakness so ingratiated himself with his master that the Pelhams thought their legitimate influence damaged by it—was dismissed. But before the confusion which arose on Walpole's fall had settled down one great point in his policy had at all events been reversed—England had thrown itself vigorously into the Continental war.
Such indeed was the position of Europe that it was impossible that England should hold aloof. But Walpole had at least tried, and with some effect, the power of diplomacy. The death of the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany had opened two great questions for which Europe had been long preparing. One of these was the succession to the Austrian dominions, which Charles Question of the Austrian succession. had attempted to secure for his daughter by means of the Pragmatic Sanction, and the other was the succession to the Empire. The questions were closely connected. The most dangerous claimant for the succession to the Austrian dominions was the Elector of Bavaria, who alone of the powers of Europe had refused the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction; he was also the most influential candidate for the Imperial dignity. The Elector rested his claim to the Austrian succession upon an arrangement by which, as long ago as the middle of the sixteenth century, Ferdinand I. was said to have substituted the heir of his daughter Anne, from whom the Elector was descended, in the place of any other female heir. A second claimant was the King of Spain, who regarded himself as the heir of all the rights of a descendant of Charles V., who, when he divided his empire with his brother, reserved the right of succession to his own immediate posterity should the direct male line of Ferdinand become extinct. Both Bavaria and Spain were close allies of France, and the possession of the Empire by the Elector, or of the Austrian dominions either by the Elector or the Spanish King, would render the influence of France paramount in Europe. It was necessary for England to oppose such an increase of the power of the Bourbons. For this purpose it had appeared necessary to Walpole to re-establish something resembling the Grand Alliance, a union at all events which should include the maritime powers, Hanover, Prussia (rapidly rising to a first-rate power), and Austria.
Ambition of Prussia.
But Prussia had just fallen into the hands of the ambitious Frederick II., supplied by his father's care with a magnificent army and with a full treasury. He saw that the opportunity had arrived for making good certain long pending claims upon a portion of Silesia, and without declaration of war, occupied the disputed territory, and marching into Bohemia, entirely defeated the Austrian troops at Molwitz. He was however yet so far German at heart, that he was willing to guarantee the election of Maria Theresa's husband to the Empire, and to support the Pragmatic Sanction, if his claims in Silesia were satisfied. To induce the Austrian princess to accept these terms became the object of English diplomacy. It was thwarted by Maria Theresa herself. A strange infatuation had taken possession of the Austrian ministers during the close of the late Emperor's reign; in spite of his action in the Polish war, they believed in the pacific tendencies of Fleury, and relied upon the friendship of France. All overtures on the part of Frederick were therefore disregarded, all appeals from England set at naught. The foolish dreams of Austria were dispelled when Frederick, thus repulsed, threw away his last remnant of German feeling and entered into close alliance with France, offering to renounce the claims which he had upon the Duchy of Berg, and to give his vote for the election of the Bavarian Elector to the Empire if his claims on Silesia were guaranteed.