The courtier, we may be sure, was too discreet to say, but ill-affected persons blurted out the truth, and the disaffected journals, from the Craftsman downwards, railed at Walpole for having bought the Queen, and at the King for being governed by her. This was repeated over and over again in ribald verse of which the following will serve as a specimen:—
You may strut, dapper George, but ’twill all be in vain;
We know ’tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign—
You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you.
The Queen and Walpole were always striving to keep these lampoons away from the King, but some one about the court, probably in the apartments of Mrs. Howard, told him of the existence of this one, and he was exceedingly annoyed. He asked Lord Scarborough if he had seen it. Scarborough admitted that he had. George then asked him who had shown it to him, but he said he had pledged his honour not to tell. The King flew into a passion, and said: “Had I been Lord Scarborough in this situation and you King, the man would have shot me, or I him, who had dared to affront me, in the person of my master, by showing me such insolent nonsense”. Scarborough replied that he had not said it was a man who had shown it to him, which made the King, who regarded this as a pitiful evasion, angrier than ever. By way of showing his independence the King for some time after was more than usually testy with the Queen, contradicting her flatly before all the court whenever she ventured an opinion, snubbing her unmercifully, pooh-poohing her wishes, and generally treating her with almost brutal rudeness. The Queen received this with meekness, and abased herself before the King more than ever. But all the while her power increased.
Soon after the coronation the country was plunged into a general election. The Jacobites came off very badly at the polls, and the Tories little better. Even with the aid of the malcontent Whigs, the Opposition made a poor muster in point of numbers, and when the new Parliament met in January, 1728, the Ministerial majority was even greater than in the last reign. Walpole had won all along the line. The result no doubt was largely due to the way in which the Government had bought owners of pocket boroughs, and to the wholesale bribery wherewith its agents seduced the voters; under such a system of corruption it was impossible for the voice of the nation to make itself effectually heard. Even many of those members of Parliament who were returned to the House of Commons in opposition to Walpole were eventually bought by him. “Every man has his price” was his cynical maxim, and he acted upon it so thoroughly that his name became a byword for corruption. True, the standard of political morality was not high in those days, the party in power, whether Whig or Tory, frequently abused the public trust and misused the public money. But it remained for Walpole to bring organised corruption to such a pitch that it paralysed popular government, and placed the balance of power, neither in the Sovereign, nor in the people, but in the hands of a Whig oligarchy. Such an oligarchy was at this period synonymous with Walpole himself, for the great Minister brooked no rivals in the King’s (or rather in the Queen’s) councils. “Sir Robert,” said the shrewd old Sarah of Marlborough, “likes none but fools and such as have lost all credit.” His earlier Administrations had included a few strong men, but one by one they had to go, unable to work with so jealous and domineering a chief. By bribery Walpole also reduced Parliament to such a condition of impotence that it was hardly more to be reckoned with than the King. The Prime Minister had really no one to consider but the Queen, with whom he had a perfect understanding.
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.