co^:5 /w* M,.^4 n^ *:.ur 'f ^ 1. ..,^' 'A; ill ?liM:^* :dwarr thhks. m.a. ni>et]}uen S. ( ®0mdl Hmv^tJi^itg Jihi^jJg THE GIFT OF . f JUr|jWa;bcfu..M.,W. 9aojv^^ Az5.'5.1^.5 n\Xl It.. 1357 DATE DUE ^gtol^.-l.. 11^7-1 a-ty jOrtg- 117? P a GAYLORO PWINTEDIN U.S.A. DA SOLWaJM""'™""" ''""^ Walpole '^^ ill 028 146 573 O iOOyl The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028146573 WALPOLE A STUDY IN POLITICS EDWARD JENKS, M.A. FELLOW OF king's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, PROFESSOR OF LAW IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LIVERPOOL. LONDON Jftetkuett ■& Co. 1894 Z83 NOTE. The following pages comprise the substance of a lecture delivered, at the invitation of the Syndicate, before the Fourth Summer Meeting of Cambridge University Extension Students in August 1893. Two great critics have recently expounded at length the importance of Walpole's career ; but, if I may venture to say so, their very greatness appears to have rendered their interpretation dangerously subjective. They seem to have attributed to Walpole a subtlety and a foresight which belong rather to their own ripe judgments than to his practical needs. I have tried to look at matters solely from Walpole's standpoint, and this must be my excuse for venturing on a short account of a career fraught with the greatest consequences to English politics. E.J. SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. It is interesting, though possibly apt to lead to somewhat hazy speculation, to observe how, at different periods of our national history, different parts of the country come into distinct prominence, almost to the eclipse of others. In the nation's childhood — the days of the shouting Saxons — the South almost monopolizes history. The fate of England is decided at Hastings. The trade of England flows through the Cinque Ports. Canterbury and Winchester are the great seats of learning and religion. A little later, when childhood has given way to the turbulence of early manhood, the fierce leaders of the North — the Mortimers, the Percies, the Lacys, the Mowbrays, and the Scropes — fill the pages of history. Then comes the period of romance and poetry, when the West, — the home of Shakspere, — the West, looking towards that great golden continent just discovered, gives the colour to England, and the seafaring men of Devon are the nation's heroes. Again, the romance dies away, and we get the plain prose of middle life, the hard, money-getting epoch; and it is the East, where the adventurous blood of the Danish folk has become tempered and steadied by the phlegm of Vermuyden's fen-reclaiming Dutchmen, and of Alva- driven weavers from Brabant, which is the typical England of the eighteenth century. Finally, the Englishman, having 4 WALPOLE : passed his youth and made his fortune, seems inclined to settle permanently in London, as in a sort of best parlour, where he can see all his treasures at once, and indulge in the garrulity of old age. All this is, no doubt, fanciful. But it is unquestionably true that Robert Walpole, the Norfolk squire, does in a very thorough way typify the age in which he lived, and the soil from which he sprang, whilst between both of these there seems a strong affinity. Walpole was of those who succeed by virtue of complete accordance with their environment ; not of those who challenge our admiration by heroic protest against adverse fate. He was born on the eve of that eighteenth century which represents indeed a fusion of the sundered parties of Cavalier and Puritan, but which appears to have made an indifferent choice of materials for retention. From the Puritans it did, perhaps, obtain its business-like qualities, its perseverance and its acuteness. But it had not a trace of the divine fire which lit up the fierce in- tolerance of the Puritan, which carried the New Model to victory at Naseby and Dunbar. The intolerance it kept, but not that conviction of a divine mission which was the one justification for it. It is recorded as an encomium upon the tomb of an eighteenth century bishop, that he was " totally free from all kinds of enthusiasm." From the Cavalier the century borrowed nothing that was good. The Cavalier's light-heartedness and jovial gal- lantry it turned into gluttonous and bibulous roystering and sordid immorality. The Cavalier's delight in gay apparel it metamorphosed into a gaudy splendour, which reached its climax in Queen Charlotte's stomacher, adorned with sixty thousand pounds' worth of jewels.^ The reckless paganism ' Horace Walpole's LetUrs, III. 434. A STUDY IN POLITICS. 5 of the Cavalier it emphasized into a dull argumentative rationalism, which built card-castles for the next age to knock down. One redeeming feature alone it had. It was heavily prosperous, a financial success. But in spite of this, the eighteenth century rides like a nightmare on the imagination of the student of history, and it is with a sense of relief that we see it disappear, before the whirlwind of the French revolution, in a cloud of full-bottomed wigs, hoops, patches and powder, sedan-chairs, preposterous family coaches, and heavy theological quartos. Walpole was born at Houghton, in North Norfolk, in August 1676. Though the old village has disappeared, pulled down by Sir Robert to make room for his great house, we can still form some idea of the place in which his boyhood was spent. It is a pleasant spot, lying on uplands well east of the fens, overlooking a country which, though genial enough, could hardly arouse a spark of the dreaded enthusiasm, and which allows perhaps, on a clear winter's day, a distant glimpse of the ships of Lynn. The tombstones in the little churchyard, which commonly con- fine their mendacity to the characters of those whom they commemorate, seem to show that the inhabitants of Houghton have formed the habit of longevity. Agriculture still lingers in the eastern counties, and there perhaps, more than elsewhere, preserves the appearance of former prosperity. The milestones near Houghton often content themselves with the device of a single figure, without speci- fying the places to which it is related ; a practice which argues a want of consideration for strangers, founded, probably, on the infrequency of their visits. Robert Walpole's father was the squire of the village ; and contemporary flattery, gravely repeated by modern historians, traces his ancestry in the direct male line to the 6 WALPOLE : days of William the Conqueror. There is, of course, no proof of the legend. The pamphlet which gave rise to it proceeds on the remarkable assumption that because there was a Reginald of Walpole in the reign of the Conqueror, and a Henry of Walpole at some uncertain later date, Henry was therefore a descendant of Reginald. Even after auth- entic history begins, there is an unexplained gap of upwards of a century in the genealogy, and the utmost we can safely say is that Walpole had a rather better pedigree than the average country squire of his time. More important is it to notice that he was hereditarily pledged to the Revolution of 1688 by the action of his father, and that, as the third son of a family of nineteen children, he was destined to a career in the Church. He appears to have accepted his destiny with equanimity. Later in his life his steady sup- porter. Queen Caroline, who dabbled in theological specu- lation,' begged him to read Bishop Butler's famous' Ana/ogy. He told her that his religion was fixed, and that he did not wish to change or improve it.^ In accordance with his father's plan, Walpole was first sent to Eton, where he was admitted a scholar on the 4th Sep- tember 1690, and in 1696 he was transferred in the ordinary way to the sister foundation of King's College, Cambridge, where he was formally received as a foundation scholar on April 22nd.^ No record (it is believed) remains to 1 Horace Walpole's Letters (ed. 1840), II. 346. ^ The mystery about Walpole's age is intensified by the college muniments. The £ti>n and King's Register describes him as thirteen on admission to Eton (Sept. 1690), and as seventeen in August 1695. Yet the King's FrotocoHum Book expressly quotes him as sixteen in April 1696. That he was really admitted to King's about April 1696 is proved by the fact that for Easter Term of that year the quarterage paid to Walpole and his chamber-companion Good was only seven shillings and sixpence, instead of the usual ten shillings {Mundum Book). A STUDY IN POLITICS, 7 identify his chamber, but it must have been in the old court north of the chapel, the original home of the provost and scholars of the foundation of St. Nicholas. Most of this court was pulled down to make room for the extension of the University Library about the year 1830, but its beautiful old gateway still survives, being carefully incor- porated with the new library buildings. Here the scholars lived, four in a room,'^ and here it must have been that Walpole suffered his severe attack of smallpox. A story connected with this incident will serve to illustrate the social atmosphere of the University at the time. The illness was serious, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had not yet appeared upon the scene with her new remedy of inoculation, and men looked upon an attack of smallpox much as we now look upon a visitation of the cholera. Walpole's physician was a certain Dr Brady, at that time a prominent and active Tory,^ and he is reported to have said, in the crisis of Walpole's illness, to one of the fellows of the College : " We must take care to save this young man, or we shall be accused of having neglected him, because he is so violent a Whig." * A few years later, one Thomas Tudway was formally deprived by the provost of King's College of his position as organist, on the ground of his having made a pun upon Queen Anne.* The pun survives in tradition, and is certainly bad enough to justify ' For some interesting antiquarian details of the vanished court and its chambers, cf. Notes by the late Henry Bradshaw in Cambridge Antiqaarian Communications, Vol. III. p. l8l. ' Author of An Introduction to The Old English History, London, 1684 ; A Complete History of England, London, 1685 ; and other works. He was Begius Professor of Physic, Member of Parliament for the University, and Master of Caius College. ' Coxe, I. p. 4. * Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, IV. 76. The formal record of the deprivation is in the King's Protocollum Booh. 8 WALPOLE : any severity, while at the same time it has not that "element of unexpected depravity" which, in the opinion of Mr Brander Matthews, is necessary to excuse the perpetration of this form of crime. These stories show that Cambridge at the beginning of the eighteenth century was not so entirely remote from practical politics as it is sometimes assumed to have been. It is quite possible that Walpole acquired his taste for political life at the University. An event soon happened which completely changed his plans. In 1698 his eldest surviving brother died, and he became expectant heir to the family estate of some two thousand a year. He at once resigned his scholarship and returned home, probably without taking a degree, to study his new position under the personal care of his father. The elder Walpole appears to have had peculiar notions upon the subject of practical education. It is said that if he felt himself inclined for a drinking bout he used to insist upon his son getting drunk first, in order that the youth might not be conscious of the paternal degrada- tion. But perhaps his system hardly enjoyed a fair trial, for he himself died in the year 1 706, leaving our Walpole the owner of the estate, subject to portions for his numerous brothers and sisters. Not long before his father's death Walpole had married Catherine Shorter, the heiress of a Lord Mayor of London, and the dowry which she brought him enabled the inheritor of Houghton to clear the estate and start with an unencumbered rent-roll. The portraits of Lady Walpole, if they do not flatter, prove her to have been a woman of great beauty, and Walpole, though he did not treat her particularly well, appears to have lived fairly happily with her during the thirty-seven years of their married life. I In the year 1701 he also succeeded his father as A STUDY IN POLITICS. 9 Member for the family borough of Castle Rising, and thus made his entrance into political life. In order that we may understand his position, it is necessary to bear in mind the leading features of the scene into which the new Member was introduced. The great question of the day was no less than a question of the disposal of the throne. The legitimist Restoration of 1660, which started with the fairest prospects of popu- larity, had proved a failure, owing to the intolerable perfidy and cruelty of James II. The nation had borne its griev- ances for three long years, because it appeared probable that they must soon come to an end by natural means. For, till the beginning of the year 1688, the next two heirs to the throne were Protestant and personally popular, while at the beginning of 1688 James was by no means a young man. But in 1688 the face of affairs was suddenly altered. James II. had been twice married ; first (rumour said much against his will) to Anne Hyde, daughter of his brother's faithful minister, the great Earl of Clarendon, and, secondly, to Mary of Modena, a princess of the House of Este. By the first marriage there had come the two princesses, Mary and Anne. The elder of these had strengthened her hold on the nation by marrying her cousin, William of Orange, who was not only a zealous and conspicuous Protestant, and a man of courage and honour, but who had the additional recommendation of being, by his mother Mary (daughter of Charles I.) of the blood royal of England. It is true that this marriage was childless, but Anne, the younger daughter of James II., was also married, and at the time there seemed no likeli- hood of the failure of Protestant heirs. 10 WALPOLE : In the spring of 1688, however, an ominous rumour began to spread, to the effect that James' second marriage, of which no issue then survived, was likely to bring him another child. Great was the consternation among those who had hopes for a peaceful solution of the difficulty. If the expected issue proved to be a son, he would, by unquestioned law, take precedence of his elder half-sisters, while, as the child of James II. and Mary of Modena, he would be surely brought up a Catholic of the narrowest type. In June 1688 the blow fell; it was announced that the Queen had borne a son, and the announcement was the signal for James' fall. The nation professed to believe that the child had been foisted on it by a trick, that it was not the queen's child at all. When, during the storm which followed, James fled the country. Parliament seized the opportunity of declaring that he had abdicated, and, in words which did as little violence as possible to the theory of hereditary right, affirmed the title of the Princess Mary and William as her husband, with reversion, after failure of their issue, to the Princess Anne and her issue. In all this there was as great respect as possible shown to the strict theory of inheritance. The assertion that James had abdicated, and the assumption that his son was supposititious were, no doubt, violently contradicted by facts, but to have avowed the facts would have been to assert the doctrine of parliamentary monarchy in unmistakeable language, and for such a step the country was by no means prepared. The equal authority given to William with his wife was necessitated by the relations between them, and was more than half justified by contemporary theories of marital right. But when William, anxious to provide against A STUDY IN POLITICS. n "further contingencies, urged the Convention Parliament to settle the devolution of the Crown in the event of the failure of Anne's issue, the House of Commons steadily refused to contemplate the contingency, further than by introducing into the Bill of Rights a clause excluding for ever all Catholics from the throne of England. With this safeguard William had to be content. And now, just as Walpole entered Parliament, the case which William had foreseen actually occurred. Queen Mary had been six years dead, and had left no issue. The last of the Princess Anne's numerous children had just died, and there was little probability that any more would be born. William had not married again, and was not likely to do so. The Princess Anne alone stood between the nation and a war of succession. It became imperative that something should be done. But it was far harder to deal with the question now. In 1688 there had been a pretty general feeling that James was impossible, and James' son was then an infant a few^ months old. In 1701 James was still alive, but absence had covered him with a kindly veil of forgiveness, and moreover, it was felt that his chances of surviving Anne were very small. The infant of 1688, known to history as " The Pretender," or, later, as " The Old Pretender," was now a rather attractive youth of thirteen. The legend of his supposititious birth was no longer believed. He was still young enough to change his religion, but not too young, upon ordinary calculations, to make a good king at the death of Anne. There was a strong feeling in his favour in the country, and if he could have satisfied reasonable anticipations of his conversion to Protestantism, the Hano- verian succession would have had a poor chance. As it 12 WALPOLE : ■was, the Protestant clause of the Bill of Rights, combined with the dread of a Catholic king, enabled William to achieve his purpose, and, by the Act of Settlement of 1701, it was provided that the Crown of England should, on failure of the existing line, descend upon the Princess Sophia of Hannover and her issue, being Protestants. Who was the Princess Sophia, and what and where was Hannover? These must have been questions asked by many plain Englishmen of those days. The Princess Sophia, it appeared, was a cynical old lady, who called herself a Protestant, and whose other claim to the honour which had fallen upon her was the fact that she was the granddaughter of James I. of England, being daughter of that Princess Elizabeth who had married the Elector Palatine in 161 3, and sister of the Princes Rupert and Maurice who had made such a noise in the Civil War. Hannover, it appeared, had, by a series of complicated genealogical freaks, almost unparalleled even in German annals, at length taken the place of the older duchy of Brunswick, itself once forming part of the ancient national duchy of Saxony, but created a separate flag-fief of the Empire in 1235. Although its recent ambitious prince, Ernest Augustus, had succeeded in making it the ninth electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, Hannover was still a second-rate German principality, not to be compared for importance with Austria or the ■ rising power of Branden- burgh. The Act of Settlement was passed shortly after Walpole's entry into Parliament, and it is said that no evidence sur- vives of his action on the occasion. But there can be little doubt that he supported the measure, and still less that it must have made a profound impression upon his mind. A STUDY IN POLITICS. 13 The Bill of Rights had been a decently veiled and very- partial infringement of the right of hereditary succession, agreed to by almost all parties at a time of great urgency and under great pressure. The Act of Settlement was a deliberate blow at hereditary succession, delivered in cold blood, and in a manner calculated not only to oppose, but what was still worse, to render ridiculous the whole theory of hereditary right. By passing over the issue of Henrietta, younger daughter of Charles I., who had married the Duke of Orleans, and whose descendant, the present king of Italy, is by legitimist theory at this day king of England, it had violated the plainest canons of descent ; while by its professed partiality for the hereditary line, — a partiality which settled the crown of England upon the second cousin once or (as it ultimately turned out) twice removed of the reigning monarch, — it cut away every shred of sentiment attaching to blood and kinship, and turned hereditary succession into a farce. Whatever sentiment of reversionary loyalty existed at the time was given to the Pretender. The future queen was strongly suspected of partiality for him. Nay, more, it seems that the Princess Sophia herself, before the passing of the Act of Settlement, had written a letter in favour of his claims. It is impossible to get up much enthusiasm for your second cousin once removed, more especially when she happens to be an unromantic old lady whom you have never seen, who cannot speak a word of your languajge, and of whose geographical position you are ignorant. There is no way more certain of bringing dis- credit upon a principle than the method of pushing it to excess. All this must have been quite clear to Walpole. He must have seen that the disposal of the Crown had become M WALPOLE : . purely a matter of business, an arrangement entered into with certain stipulations on both sides. He must have seen too that Parliament had really for the second time within a quarter of a century disposed of the Crown, and from this reflection it was surely not an unfair or abstruse inference that the man who could rule Parlia- ment could rule the Crown also. Moreover, he must have seen that the settlement of 1701 gave deep and lasting offence to a powerful body in the nation, and that the advisers of the step might at any time be called upon to answer for it with their heads. Finally, a very short experience of politics must have convinced him that the chief supporters of the existing dynasty lay amongst the prosaic, unsentimental classes — the merchants and trades- men whose interests William protected, and for whose sake he had reformed the coinage, the small fund-holders whose claims against the House of Stuart he had guaranteed, and the dissenters to whom he had accorded a limited measure of toleration. These few facts Walpole must have seen, and they were the guiding stars of his policy through his long career. | Fidelity to the Act of Settlement, a keen eye on Jacobite plottings, easy taxation and beneficial trade measures, steady abstinence from war and continental politics — these, in brief, were the kernel of Walpole's political creed. The young Member had not to wait long for recognition. He had a handsome presence, a popular wife, a decent income, and three pocket boroughs in his family. He was generous with his money. When, a few years after this, the fellows of King's were seeking help to build the great block which faces the present main entrance of the college, Walpole sent them j^soo, and, being complimented A STUDY IN POLITICS. ij upon his generosity, replied that he had merely paid for his board and lodging as a scholar. He was full of energy.^ When his son, the lackadaisical Horace, went in after years to do his electioneering at King's Xynn, the borough for which, after his first Parliament, Sir Robert always sat, he was bearded by an ancient relative of the family with the words — "Child, you have done a thing to-day that your father never did in his whole life ; you sat as they carried you, he always stood the whole time." ^ He had, moreover, friends in high place. His schoolmate, Lord Townshend, who was soon to become his brother-in-law, and who was for many years his chief political friend, was already a rising man. The official head of the world of politics was the Earl of Godolphin, whose younger brother, Henry Godolphin, had been made Provost of Eton before Walpole left, and had signed his letters of dismissal. These facts will easily account for the small post on the Council of Admiralty of Prince George, which was given to Walpole in 1705, and his own abilities speedily re- commended him for the more important posts of Secretary at War and Treasurer of the Navy, to which he succeeded in 1708. It was in this position that Walpole suffered his first great defeat, and, at the same time, took his place as a politician of the first rank in contemporary affairs. The eighteenth century had inherited from its pre- decessor a fondness for political sermons. The modern newspaper was only just making its appearance, the political meeting proper was as yet hardly distinguishable from an attempt at forcible revolution. In the church and conventicle alone, and even here only under severe limits, was it possible to discuss, or rather to declaim ^ Letters, III. 391. i6 WALPOLE : politics. But here, with care, it was possible ; and the skill required to steer the mean between the temptations of an attack to which there could be no immediate reply, and a criticism which should escape a Government prosecu- tion, seems to have exercised a fascination upon adventurous minds. On the 5th November 1709, Dr Sacheverell, a Tory divine, preached before the Lord Mayor and Corporation in St Paul's Cathedral a sermon on the text — " In perils among false brethren." The day was a double anniversary, for it commemorated the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1603, and the landing of William of Orange in 1688. The sermon, which is dreary enough reading to us, apparently produced a violent effect upon the congregation, was afterwards printed, and had an immense sale. There can be no doubt that it contained many allusions to contemporary politics, thinly veiled in Scriptural disguise, and that these allusions were mainly uncomplimentary to the existing Government, which practically was the same that had favoured the Act of Settlement. But the avowed complaint of the Govern- ment was that the preacher had openly preached the doctrine of non-resistance, and had thereby impUedly stigmatised the Revolution of 1688 as unlawful. In spite of the advice of the more cautious members of the Government, it was decided that Dr Sacheverell should be impeached in solemn form by a Committee of the Commons before the House of Lords, and the trial took place in 17 10. Walpole is said to have advised against the proceedings, but it is certain that he acted as one of the principal accusers at the trial. The prosecu- tion had a hopeless task. Not only had they to insist upon the doctrine that resistance is sometimes lawful, A STUDY IN POLITICS. 17 always an awkward doctrine for a Government to admit, but they had to prove that the counter - doctrine, if adopted, would have rendered the Revolution of 1688 -impossible, or at least illegal. Sacheverell admitted the inculcation of the doctrine of non-resistance, and had, moreover, no difficulty in showing that, at any rate until a few years before, the tenet had been a cardinal maxim of orthodox Anglican theology. In fact, he quoted passages to that effect from the works of several of the very bishops who sat as his judges. But as to the innuendo, he denied it entirely, and pointed triumphantly to the fact that William of Orange and the managers of the Revolution, in all public documents, had carefully disavowed the obvious truth that resistance was being used. (That is the danger of nursing a fiction in your bosom ; at an awkward moment it may turn and rend you.) The pro- secution fell back on the elaborate myth of an original contract between king and people, and. were challenged, with some humour, to produce the document. For the defence, there was no difficulty in proving the existence both of perils, and of "false brethren," and the gem of the report' occurs in this connection, in an epigram quoted from a certain History of Religion, to the effect that "creeds were the Spiritual Revenges of Dissenting Parties upon one another." ^ Public opinion, always ready in England to rise in favour of a man apparently contending for freedom of speech and opinion, was wholly in favour of the prisoner. The mob surrounded the Queen's coach, and hoped she was in favour of Dr Sacheverell, as she unquestionably ' See the Report of the trial, published by authority. Tonson, 1710, at page 219. i8 WALPOLE : was. The Government obtained a conviction, because they had a majority in the House of Lords, but the House did not dare to pronounce a substantial sentence, and on the wave of resentment provoked by the trial the Tories came into power, the existing Ministry was dismissed, and I Walpole, though as a subordinate and useful official he was offered terms by St John, resigned his places. The result of the trial was a lesson which he never forgot. Never again could he be persuaded to meddle with the \Established Church. In truth, the change of affairs came home to him in a very personal way. When St John found that he could not induce Walpole to support the new Government, he deter- mined to take his revenge, and Walpole was accused in the House of Commons of appropriating a thousand pounds of public money, in connection with a forage contract which had passed through his hands as Secretary at War. No doubt the accusation was prompted by party spite, but there seems unquestionably to have been a foundation for it. The best case that Walpole's apologists can make out for him is that the money went to a friend, and that seems to us a poor defence. But according to the morality of the day it was considered fully adequate, and when Walpole was expelled the House, and committed to the Tower, he was treated as a martyr by his political supporters, and the incident seems to have added greatly to his weight with his party. We cannot do more than allude in passing to the events of the next few years, during which Walpole was in opposition. The policy of Harley and St John was the true party policy of undoing the work of political opponents, simply because it is the work of political opponents. The A STUDY IN POLITICS. 19 brilliant series of victories by which Marlborough had made England the arbiter of Europe was thrown away by the Treaty of Utrecht, the terms of which were so favourable to France that Louis XIV., unused to the amenities of party politics, at first refused to believe his good fortune. Judged in the light of history, the Peace of Utrecht may have been a wise step ; but, judged from the standpoint of its supporters, it was simply a means of disgracing Marlborough. The Occasional Conformity Act ^ undid the toleration policy of the Revolution. The restoration of private patronage in the Scottish Church^ sowed the seeds of future disruption. The stamp duty of 1711^ was a deliberate attempt to stifle the new-born free- dom of the press, and the Schism Act of 17 14 set the seal on a barbarous and reactionary policy of religious intolerance. Fortunately, in their elation, Harley and St John lost their heads. They quarrelled with one another ; the attempt to bring in the Pretender on the death of the queen proved a failure ; the Elector of Hannover duly succeeded by virtue of the Act of Settlement ; the Tories disappeared from practical politics for half-a-century, and Walpole, now regarded as one of the chiefs of his party, came back in 17 14 to office in the capacity of Paymaster of the Forces. In the following year, he acquired the commanding positions of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, sharing the leadership in affairs with Townshend and Stanhope, the Secretaries of State. The new Government successfully tided over the stormy years which followed the accession of the House of Bruns- wick, suppressed the belated rising of the Jacobites, and ' 10 Anne, cap. 2. ^ 10 Anne, cap. 12. * lo.Anne, cap. 19, § loi. 20 WALPOLE : passed the Act by which the life of ParUament is prolonged from three to seven years. But Walpole and Townshend had to retire before a palace intrigue in 1 7 1 7 ; and it was not until three years later that Walpole obtained that supreme position which he held for so long, and entered upon that period of power which is felt by all students of politics to be a landmark in English history/ His reappearance in office was due to one of the most remark- able crises which the English commercial world has ever seen. The South Sea Company had been formed under an Act of Parliament passed in 1710,^ to develop that trade in American waters which had long been guarded as a jealous monopoly by Spain and Portugal, but for which English merchants had been thirsting ever since the days of Drake and Frobisher. Up to the year 1 7 1 3, all English adventurers in the southern seas, and the new Company amongst others, had really been in the position of commeij^l pirates, liable to short shrift if captured by Spanish revenue vessels. But through the Treaty of Utrecht a recognised opening had been made by the concession to England of the Assiunto, or contract for the supply of slaves from Africa to the Spanish mining settlements, hitherto furnished by the French Guinea Company, and by the admission of a single annual Enghsh ship to the port of Acapulco on the western coast of South America. The benefit of these stipulations had, by virtue of the monopoly granted at the time of its foundation, been transferred by the Crown to the South Sea Company, but the renewal of the war with Spain had rendered the provisions valueless. Moreover, the Company had paid * 9 Anne, cap. 21. A STUDY IN POLITICS. 21 heavily for its privileges. From the very first it had beerj intended by Harley that it should contribute to the reduc- tion of the National Debt, an institution then in its infancy, but even in its infantile condition causing much uneasi- ness to every Government called upon to pay the interest of it. The original proprietors of South Sea Stock had, in fact, been public creditors, incorporated into a joint stock company. But whereas by the original Act the Company had merely been the agent for receiving and transmitting to its shareholders the interest upon their claims which it received from the Government, the astounding proposition of 1 7 1 9 appears to have been that the Company should pay an enormous sum of money for the privilege of permanently taking over the liability for the National Debt, in return for a temporary assignment of part of the national revenue, and a permission to increase its nominal capital to an amount corresponding with the additional interest which it would have to pay. I hesitate very much to attempt any account of a transaction which in- volves a summary of the appalling prolixity of the South Sea Act of 1 7 1 9,^ and the more so, that I observe that historians, even those who profess to deal specially with economic matters, glide round the subject with discreet vagueness, or shirk it altogether. But the theory on which the South Sea Bubble was founded seems to have been, that the Company was suffering from lack of capital, and that an increase in its nominal capital, even though it represented no increase of disposable funds, would in itself be sufficient. We must remember that the modern system of credit was then only just beginning to appear, and that the vaguest notions as to its character were abroad. Moreover, it must ^ 6 Geo. I. cap. 4. 22 WALPOLE : be borne in mind that 17 19 was a year of insane specula- tion, in which the hoarded wealth of a long series of prosperous years was seeking investment in all forms. People were only too ready to believe in the glorious possibilities of " trade with the Southern Seas," and the fact that this trade was to include the Greenland fisheries does not in the least appear to have staggeired their faith. The scheme of the Company was received with enthusiasm ; by dint of unscrupulous manoeuvring the shares rose to a fabulous height. Walpole himself kept his head, and de- nounced the project. Finding his remonstrances unheeded, he bought for the rise, and, on his own confession, was satisfied with a profit of a thousand per cent. As he was not then a member of the Government,'^ he cannot be accused of anything worse than a cynical trading upon human infirmities. But when the crash came, it was found • that several members of the Cabinet which had made the bargain with the Company had realized huge fortunes at the expense of the wretched shareholders. A whirlwind of popular indignation swept the guUty Ministers from office, and by the unanimous voice of the nation Walpole was called upon to restore order to the financial chaos. He must have contemplated the task with some misgiving; but courage was always one of Walpole's best qualities, and he knew that the country would be content to save almost \ anything from the wreck. He formed a new Government, returning to his old posts at the Treasury, and in less than a year, after one unsuccessful attempt,^ devised and carried through a scheme which was accepted as satisfactory. ^ He held a subordinate office, but had no share in the policy of the Cabinet. ' 7 Geo. I, St. i. cap. 5^ A STUDY IN POLITICS. 23 Four millions of the seven which the Company had agreed to pay as premium to the Government were released ; two millions of the Stock representing this liability were can- celled, and the rest distributed by way of compensation amongst those stockholders who had bought at ruinous prices. Stockholders who had borrowed money from the Company on deposit of their stock or subscription receipts were discharged on payment of ten per cent, of their in- debtedness; and existing time-bargains were annulled.^ Finally, the estates of the fraudulent Ministers and Directors were confiscated for the relief of those who had suffered by the fluctuations of the stock.^ The incident of the South Sea Bubble must have been full of meaning for Walpole. He was a man peculiarly impressionable by the logic of events, singularly clear- sighted and correct in his judgment of contemporary circumstances. For theories and principles he had no aptitude ; in attempting to read national feeling he more than once made serious mistakes. But his estimate of individual men, his reading of single events, were almost infallible. And now, as he looked upon the individuals who comprised the Government of England — the king, his fellow Ministers, the Lords, the Commons — he must have felt his superiority to all of them, and, what is more, he must have felt that his superiority was recognized. When the South Sea agony had been at its height, the late Government had hurried the king back from Hannover, but the royal presence had failed to secure tranquillity. The House of Lords had displayed during the crisis little beyond a reckless and childish desire for vengeance. The 1 7 Geo. I. St. ii. ^ 7 Geo. I. st. i. cap. I. 24 WALPOLE -. House of Commons had been betrayed by its leaders, and had been the victim of the grossest imposition. It was not till he, Walpole, had been allowed to take the helm of affairs, not till he was known to be in treaty with the Bank of England, that the panic began to subside. He had pulled the nation out of its slough of despond, and both he and the nation were aware of the fact. So far as prac- tical everyday life was concerned, Walpole was in 17 21 admittedly the first of living Englishmen. It cannot be considered wonderful that in this position of affairs he determined to do something to render permanent and secure that power which he felt he knew how to use, and which the unanimous voice of the nation had conferred upon him. Remember that he had twice been ousted from office for no fault of his own — once by the intrigues of a queen's favourite, once by the treachery of his own colleague. Walpole determined that no Mrs Masham or General Stanhope should play the like trick again. Let us try to see what the problem was. We may state it this way. Between Walpole and the possession of supreme power lay four apparent obstacles — the . Crown, the Privy Council, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. All these had to be disposed of, or rendered subservient to the man who should really rule the nation. And, of course, there could be no question of force. Everything had to be done with the greatest respect for order and tradition. The first obstacle was the Crown. No doubt in former times the Crown had often been the tool of favourites, or the slave of ambitious Ministers. But these had been men of its own choice, men to whom from personal A STUDY IN POLITICS. 25 favour the king had yielded his highest prerogatives. No one ever questioned that the Crown had a right to abase its favourite Minister from the purest caprice, or to sub- stitute the personal wishes of the monarch for the policy of the Council. All the attempts of the nation to impose independent Ministers on the Crown had hitherto been unsuccessful. Even William of Orange, though he had before his accession disavowed any wish to meddle in English affairs, had found the temptation to kingship too strong to be resisted. Even Anne, weak as she was, and liable to be led by favourites, changed her favourites when she pleased, as Marlborough found to his cost. But Walpole was no favourite of George I., at least at the beginning of his administration. George I. was not by any means a fool, and he recognized instinctively that in Walpole he had, not a servant, but a master, — a master who used all the forms of servility, who called himself a humble servant, but a master still. It was the logic of events which wrought the change. George I. could not speak English ; he took practically no interest in English affairs. -His heart was in his beloved Hannover, and his chief desire of England was money to lavish on Hanoverian troops and Hanoverian favourites. A medieval king in a similar position would have simply spent his feudal revenues and sold his Crown lands to satisfy his wants. But it so happened that half a century before the accession of George I. most of the feudal revenues of the English Crown had been abolished/ and that the Crown lands had recently been rendered in- alienable by Act of Parliament.^ When the feudal revenues had been abolished, a compensation in personal taxation had been settled on the Crown, but the value of money was * 12 Car. II. cap. 24. - I Anne, St. i., cap. 7, §§ 5-7. 36 WALPOLE : falling fast, and the Crown could not pay its way without constant additional help. This help the House of Commons alone could give, and George knew very well that, even if he had swallowed his pride, and asked personally for supplies, he would have stood very little chance of success. He was not in the least popular ; he did not understand the peculiar traditions of the House. I Walpole, on the other hand, was an adept at getting money out of the Commons. He spent much of his life in the House; he understood it thoroughly; the House both liked and respected him. Walpole gave the king to understand that he would undertake, upon certain terms, to find him as much money as he could reasonably desire. But the terms were high. They were no less than that the king should place at Walpole's disposal the whole of the vast powers which, by the law of the constitution, could only be exercised in the name of the Crown. The proposal sounds to us audacious; but Walpole had grasped the cardinal truth, that many a man will yield the substance of power, who would fight to the death rather than give up the shadow. He \studiously preserved all the forms of respect, and the king continued in name to rule the State ; he was merely Ifcting as Walpole's puppet, but the strings which the linister pulled were decorously concealed. In securing the king, Walpole had also disposed of the Privy Council. For the Privy Council, though by the theory of the constitution a very important body, the organ of nearly all executive power, has always been composed of men liable to instant dismissal by the Crown without reason assigned. Accordingly, had the Privy Council proved refractory, there would have been no trouble in A STUDY IN POLITICS. 27 reducing it to order by dismissals and appointments. It was part of the king's bargain to act in this, as well as other matters, according to the wish of the Minister. But there was no necessity for such harsh measures, for the Privy Council had long been too unwieldy for practical purposes, and a custom had gradually grown up of confining its real business to an informal body of the chief members of the Government, who were all members of the Council, but who had no legal right to act in its name. The history of this body — the Cabinet — ^is obscure, but by the time of Walpole's admission to power its position was fairly well recognised. The Cabinet was the Minister's Council, just as the Privy Council was the king's Council. If the king wished to pay any of his friends the compli- ment of making them Privy Councillors, well and good ; the matter was of little importance either way. But it was part of the bargain that the Minister alone should settle who were to be of the Cabinet. Had the king chosen to attend the meetings of the Cabinet, there could, of course, have been no legal objection, for the members were in theory his councillors. Anne did, in fact, attend Cabinet meetings. But totmjatgly George I. soon dropped the practice, and his example has ever since been followed. The formal Privy Council, presided over by the monarch, merely meets to give legal sanction to the decisions of the Cabinet, and it is understood that no discussion by the formal body is allowed. By the side of the Crown and Privy Council, which constitute the form or body of Government, there exist the Minister and the Cabinet, which constitute its essence and soul. Walpole's relations with the House of Lords are not quite so easy to understand. He gave the Lords a good 28 WALPOLE : many .places, by far the majority of places, in his. Cabinets, and the tradition continued till the end of the century. He distributed honours and titles with skill. Though he had vigorously opposed the Bill to limit the creation of peers, he never condescended to blustering threats of "swamping."' He left that kind of thing to political mountebanks like Bolingbroke. But he showed the House of Lords that he was not afraid of it, and, at the same time, that he had no animus against it. He looked upon a peerage as the natural retiring post of a man eminent for public services, and he rather preferred to take his colleagues from the ranks of the peers. But he always showed by his conduct that he regarded the position as incompatible with the headship of affairs. He himself refused a peerage in 1723.^ His one ujiworthy act of revenge at the time of his fall was to persuade his success- ful opponent, Pulteney, to accept an earldom, thereby shutting him out from real power for ever. With the House of Commons the case was different, and it is here, I think, that Walpole's policy has been most mis- understood. The orthodox theory is that Walpole transferred the government of the country from the Crown to the House of Commons, that he enabled the latter to know its own mind by organising it on strictly party lines, and to carry out the dictates of its mind by the agency of an Executive Committee appointed indirectly by the party with a majority — in other words, by the Cabinet. Now, -as a matter of fact, this scheme of government had been tried in England. It was virtually the scheme, though but half-understood at the time, which the Long Parliament adopted after the death of Charles I., and which, in their ' Coxe, 1. 176. A STUDY IN POLITICS. 29 hands, came to such an ignominious end. It is the committee theory of government, which treats the country as a club or a commercial company, and relies upon what the late Archbishop of York wittily called " the infallibility of the odd man.'' There is no evidence that Walpole was smitten with this theory. There is much evidence the other way. It is true that he regarded the support of the House of Commons as the essential of his power. That is proved beyond question by the great event of 1742. The moment he ceased to hold the House of Commons, Walpole resigned his office. But it is equally true that he regarded himself as the ruler, not as the mouthpiece, of the House. It was support he looked for, not guidance. No one can read his remarkable speech on the motion to repeal the Septennial Act,^ without feeling that this was Walpole's view. The net result of his argument is that a return to triennial parliaments would render the support of the House of Commons not worth having. His manifest reluctance to admit members of the Lower House into his Cabinets ^ seems to me to argue a fear of possible rivals, almost as much as a desire to conciliate the House of Lords. It is true also that Walpole called himself a Whig, and that he regarded the Tories, as a party, as beyond the pale of practical politics. But almost the only Whig tenet that he consistently maintained was the right of the Protestant, succession. Many of his bitterest poUtical opponents were Whigs. The despised "Patriots" were 1 Coxe, I. 420. ' Apparently there was but one commoner— Sir Charles Wager — in the Cabinet during Walpole's long tenure of office. 30 WALPOLE : chiefly Whigs. Pulteney was a Whig, so were Carteret, Sandys, and Pitt. And as to individual Tories, he had no manner of objection to them. When Philip Yorke (afterwards the great Lord Hardwicke) hesitated, in 1737, to accept the Chancellorship, vacant by the death of Lord Talbot, Walpole threatened to offer the seals to Fazackerly. " Fazackerly ! " exclaimed Yorke, " impossible ! He is certainly a Tory, — perhaps a Jacobite." "It's all very true," said Sir Robert, taking out his watch ; " but if by one o'clock you do not accept my offer, Fazackerly by two becomes Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and one of the staunchest Whigs in all England."^ No Minister really dependent on a party professing a definite political creed, no American President, for example, would dare to take such a step. In fact, the party which Walpole created in the House of Commons was a Walpole party, and he kept it in the simplest way. No doubt some members were fantastic enough to support him because they thought him on the whole the man best fitted to rule the country. For less Quixotic persons he had the two simple engines of fear and hope. His use of official patronage was open and avowed. Any official who voted against the Government was promptly dismissed. When Lords Cobham and Bolton opposed his Excise scheme, they were deprived of their regiments, even though (probably because) their opposition had been successful. He said in the House of Commons itself that the man must be a pitiful Minister who did not displace an officer who voted against his measures in Parliament.^ ' Horace Walpole's Letters, I. 52, note 2. s Coxe, I. 651. A STUDY IN POLITICS. 31 But Walpole used still coarser methods. In spite of Mr Morley's ingenious attempt to remove the obloquy that has gathered round his name, we cannot doubt that Walpole adopted measures which we should now condemn by the uncourtly name of bribery. Very likely he was not personally corrupt, though he provided for his family at the expense of the nation with a lavishness which hardly bears any comparison with their merits, and his conduct over the forage contract and the South Sea stock was none too squeamish. But to maintain his majority he was not scrupulous. Naturally he was not so foolish as to leave documentary evidence behind him ; but the cir- cumstantial evidence is overwhelming. He had opposed, unsuccessfully, the Place Act of 1705 ; he opposed success- fully every attempt made during his tenure of office to extend the principle of that Act. He long had an income of thirteen or (fourteen thousand a year from his estate and offices, and he made at least one big haul in specula- tion ; yet he died forty thousand pounds in debt.^ When his fall from power became certain, he made one of his chief agents a peer to prevent his being examined by the House of Commons, ^ and the other declared that he would rather go to the Tower than reveal what he knew.^ The whole vast machinery of the Crown boroughs was in Walpole's. hands. And, finally, his son Horace, who always revered his memory, years after his father's death practically confessed the charge of corruption ; merely urging that his father only bought those who were already for sale, and that he bought them for good objects.* We may ' Horace Walpole's Letters, VIII. 423. "" Ibid,, I. 176. 3 Jl,ii_^ I, ,gg * Ibid., VIII. 337, and IX. 9, 10. 32 WALPOLE : question whether any object can be better than the maintenance of honesty ; and the best excuse we can make for Walpole probably is, that his morahty was no worse than that of his time. What that morality was may be guessed from the following little incident. In the heat of the Excise struggle of 1733, Lord Stair, talking to Queen Caroline on political matters, let fall something labout his conscience. "Oh, my lord," said the queen, /\" don't talk to me of conscience, you will make me faint." * This, then, was what Walpole did in his famous ad- ministration. He found the government of England going begging, and the people who might have seized it muddled and confused with theories about division of powers and mixed constitutions, either misunderstanding the condi- tions under which government could be exercised, or not possessing the firmness and courage . necessary to exercise it. Seeing clearly himself the true position of affairs, that, as a great writer subsequently puts it, the spigot of taxation j had become the rudder of government, seeing also that the j English nation would readily accord its confidence to the man who could govern it firmly and humanely, he sub- ordinated, by the force of his personal ability, the organs of government one by one to his will, and so finally solved the problem which the introduction of a foreign dynasty had created. Not only did he substitute twenty years of steady administration for the shifting intrigues of the early days of George I., but he handed down to future genera- tions a scheme of politics which, though by no means perfect, has satisfied the practical wants of the nation for a century and a half. And all this without a single violent change, or anything that could be called, in the ordinary ' Morley, Walpole, p. 173. A STUDY IN POLITICS. 33 sense, a revolution. The legal position of the Crown, the formal law of the constitution, are, with scarcely an ex- ception, the same that they were left by the Act of Settle- ment. Yet no one doubts that since the Act of Settlement was passed the government of England has wholly changed its character. The change is due to Walpole more than to any other man. One substantial addition, and one only, has been made to his scheme — the addition established by jthe great precedent of 1784, when the younger Pitt appealed from the verdict of a hostile House of Commons to the verdict of the constituencies. The precedent there- by created has been of vast importance, for it has enabled a Prime Minister on the one hand to overawe a recalci- trant House, and on the other to admit a large number of members of the House into his Cabinet without fear of rivalry. But this effect has only strengthened the tendency of Walpole's policy, which, if I understand it aright, was to establish, not House of Commons govern- ment, nor even Cabinet government, but Prime Minister government. It is curious to notice how Walpole was obliged to disclaim the odious title of Prime Minister,^ and to contrast his disclaimer with the open complaint of Temple,^ a few years later, that the country was suffering for lack of a First Minister. Since Walpole's time, his system has only once been in serious danger, namely, when George HI. found in Lord North a servant with sufficient ability and sufficient pliancy to carry out his schemes for manag- ing the House of Commons ; and it is a singular fact that, as Mr Morley tells us,* Lord North would never allow himself to be called Prime Minister when he could help it. ' ■" Coxe, I. 660. ' Horace Walpole's Letters, III. 459. ' Walpole, p, 162. C 34 WALPOLE : But the results of that period were not happy ; and the short and disastrous " Coalition " Governments of 1 744, 1783, 1806, 1827, and 1852 have but emphasized the fact that a fully acknowledged Prime Minister is essential to the working of English political ideas. In spite of all its bitter experience of a monarchical system, a system in which the will of a single ruler sways the course of govern- ment, the genius of the English nation has declared again in favour of a monarchy ; but of a monarchy in which the monarch takes the humbler title of Prime Minister, and in which he can be dismissed, and another monarch appointed in his place, without anarchy or bloodshed. That is the meaning of Walpole's career. It is quite impossible for me now, within the limits at my disposal, to tell the rest of Walpole's story. It is interesting, if not very picturesque, including as it does the curious turn of events by which Walpole acquired, I contrary to every one's expectation, the confidence and esteem of George II., his singular friendship with that remarkable woman, Queen Carohne, his rejected Excise scheme, his reluctant war with Spain, and the gathering of that storm of jealousy and disappointed ambition which finally drove him from ofiice in 1742. I can merely offer a single other glimpse of him before his death, for I hope to be able to say just two words of criticism upon the system which he founded. After his fall from power, Walpole appears to have retained that genial cynicism and shrewd- ness of judgment which were, perhaps, his most striking characteristics. Two little stories illustrate them well. When he was driven from office, there was, according to the practice of the time, a Committee appointed to discover materials for an impeachment. Of course, the Committee A STUDY IN POLITICS. 35 was mainly composed of the ex-minister's bitter foes ; but by some means two of his friends obtained places. He was congratulated on the fact. " No," said Walpole, " the moment they are appointed, they will grow so jealous of the honour of the Committee, that they will prefer that to every ■ other consideration." '^ Only a few days before his death, the Duke of Cumberland, son of George II., pressed by his father to a match with an ill-favoured princess, sent to Walpole to know how he should get out of the difficulty. The Mentpr advised him to consent to the match, but to stipulate for an ample settlement. The advice was taken, and the plan disappeared.^ These anecdotes are fair samples of Walpole. He will\ never live in history as a great man, for he had no trace of that aloofness from common minds, that superiority to common motive, that vein of Quixotism, which is essential to our conception of greatness in character; and, as Mr / Morley has said, in his most admirable and sympathetic j study of Walpole, it is by character, more than by achieve- ment, that a man obtains a place amongst the world's heroes. Walpole's genius was typical, rather than in- dividual. As he said of himself, if he had not been Prime Minister he would have been Archbishop of Canterbury. But he did a great day's work in this busy world, he was in no way below the average of his contemporaries in morality, he retained the respect and trust of a great nation even after his fall from power, and he went to the grave full of years and honours. Of the complex system of government which he be- queathed to the country, as a substitute for its six hundred years' tradition of royal power, it behoves every critic to ' Horace Viaipois's Letters , I. p. 186. ^ Ibid., p. cii. 36 WALPOLE : speak with caution. The obvious meaning and purport of the system are to bring to the head of affairs, by a crude and not wholly satisfactory process of selection, a certain amount of practical ability ; and, so far, its advantages may be admitted. Certain other features of the system are likewise so obvious that I shall hardly be accused of blindness if I do not specially refer to them. But two points seem to me to deserve a word of mention even in this place. I will not say that these points are not under- stood ; but I do think they are apt to be neglected in practice. The first of them is the peculiar state of affairs brought about by the relations of political parties to our system of government. I have endeavoured to show that this feature was not directly due to Walpole's action, but I will admit that it followed naturally from his system. Since the greatness of the position which he created has become apparent, the holder of it has, naturally, always been sub- jected to organized criticism. So far as this criticism is kept within moderate bounds, it probably does good ; the Administration works under a sense of responsibility which has many of the beneficial results of competition. In the comparatively small arena of the House of Commons, excellences and defects of administration can really be apprehended, and understood. But when the publication of parliamentary debates transferred the struggle to a wider field, it became evident that heavier artillery would be more effective than the small arms of administrative criti- cism. Sweeping proposals of legislative change are more • attractive to the masses than the sober discussion of actual conduct. The result has been to erect legislation into a kind of A STUDY IN POLITICS. 37 fetich. It may be, as Horace Walpole said, that " the mob will never sing LillibuUero but in opposition to some other mob." But surely it is not necessary to be always singing LillibuUero. In former times, a great and urgent need of change used to bring into existence a party to effect the change. Nowadays, the existence of a party renders it necessary to invent an urgency, and the needs of the party come to be looked upon as the necessity of the country. If the wretched and shallow commonplaces of party con- troversy, the glib repartees and personal bickerings which pass for argument in political circles, the indecent rowdi- ness of political bodies, were the only penalties paid by common-sense people for the existence of the present system, it would be bad enough. But when a dialectical victory means the embodiment of the victorious polemic in actual legislation, binding upon all members of the community, it becomes time to protest. Legislation is per se a dangerous remedy ; it may be compared with the use of chloral for insomnia, or of colchicum for gout. But the comparison is inadequate, for legislation demoralises both the physician and the patient, by substituting brute force for the operation of reason and persuasion. Even legislation that represents the best scientific opinion, even legislation which represents the opinion of the great bulk of the community, is open to this objection. But party legislation, which may represent only the opinion of a bare majority, is positively unjust. For the Government which initiates the legislation derives its strength and power from the minority in the State as well as from the majority, and it is a species of political treason for a Government to use the power entrusted to it by a minority for purposes of which that minority strongly disapproves. 38 WALPOLE : The other point to which I shall refer is, perhaps, less obvious. England stands almost alone among civilised countries at the present day, in having a constitution which, in its main features, is purely traditionary. Even the old formal constitution, which represents the country as being governed by the Crown, with the advice of its Privy Council, is stated in no authoritative document. The actual working constitution, that system which Walpole did so much to introduce, could hardly be stated in writing at all. No six statesmen of any prominence would agree as to its details. But every one admits that its most cardinal feature, — such a feature, for example, as that a Parliament cannot last for longer than seven years, — could be altered with no more formalities than are required to authorize a railway from Mudborough to Little Pedlington. The seemingly paradoxical result of this last rule is, that because changes can be so easily made they are very rarely made. But from the first circumstance, the tradi- tionary character of the constitution, there follows also this important result, that there is in England no recognised standard of political ethics. AVhere there is a written constitution which cannot be altered without immense difficulty, it is always possible to appeal to its provisions, and to test by them the details of political conduct. In England there is no such Court of Appeal, and a Minister with a majority behind him can do practically what he likes, if he chooses to run the risk of offending pubUc opinion. But this is a very large proviso, and I am not sure that the activity of English public opinion on con- stitutional matters is not a better safeguard against an unconscientious use of power than the terms of a written constitution. One thing is quite certain, that the whole- A STUDY IN POLITICS. 39 someness of English politics depends almost entirely upon the political intelligence and honesty of the individual citizen ; and that the best service which an English states- man can render to his country is to promote by every means in his power the growth of enlightened and sober political character. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.