That he practised corruption 3 on a large scale is, we think indisputable. But whether he deserves all the invectives which have been uttered against him on that account may be questioned. The Parliament could not go on unless. the Parliament could be kept in order. And how was the Parliament to be kept in order? Three hundred years ago it would have been enough for a statesman to have the support of the crown. It would now, we hope and believe, be enough for him to enjoy the confidence and approbation of the great body of the middle class. A hundred years ago it would not have been enough to have both crown and people on his side. The Parliament had shaken off the. control of the royal prerogative. It had not yet fallen under the control of public opinion. A large proportion of the members had absolutely no motive to support any administration except their own interest, in the lowest sense of the word. Under these circumstances the country could be governed only by corruption. Bolingbroke, who was the ablest and most vehement of those who raised the clamour against corruption had no better remedy to propose than that the royal prerogative should be strengthened. The remedy would, no doubt, have been efficient. The only question is, whether it would not have been worse than the disease. The fault was in the constitution of the legislature; and to blame those ministers who managed the legislature in the only way in which it could be managed is gross injustice. They submitted to extortion because they could not help themselves. We might as well accuse the poor Lowland farmers who paid black mail to Rob Roy of corrupting the virtue of the Highlanders, as accuse Sir Robert Walpole of corrupting the virtue of Parliament. His crime was merely this, that he employed his money more dexterously, and got more support in return for it than any of 3 Bribery of members of parliament.

those who preceded or followed him. He was himself incorruptible by money. His dominant passion was the love of power; and the heaviest charge which can be brought against him is that to this passion he never scrupled to sacrifice the interests of his country.

One of the maxims, which, as his son tells us, he was most in the habit of repeating, was, quieta non movere. It was indeed the maxim by which he generally regulated his public conduct. It is the maxim of a man more solicitous to hold power long than to use it well. It is remarkable that, though he was at the head of affairs during more than twenty years, not one great measure, not one important change for the better or for the worse in any part of our institutions marks the period of his supremacy. Nor was this because he did not clearly see that many changes were very desirable. He had been brought up in the school of toleration, at the feet of Somers and of Burnet. He disliked the shameful laws against Dissenters. But he never could be induced to bring forward a proposition for repealing them. The sufferers represented to him the injustice with which they were treated, boasted of their firm attachment to the House of Brunswick 5 and to the Whig party, and reminded him of his own repeated declaration of good will to their cause. He listened, assented, promised, and did nothing. At length the question was brought forward by others, and the minister after a hesitating and evasive speech voted against it. The truth was that he remembered to the latest day of his life that terrible explosion of highchurch feeling which the foolish prosecution of a foolish parson had occasioned in the days of Queen Anne. If the Dissenters had been turbulent he would probably have relieved them but while he apprehended no danger from them, he would not run the slightest risk for their sake. 4 "Let things alone." The line of the Hanoverian kings.

He acted in the same manner with respect to other questions. He knew the state of the Scotch Highlands. He was constantly predicting another insurrection in that part of the empire. Yet, during his long tenure of power, he never attempted to perform what was then the most obvious and pressing duty of a British statesman, to break the power of the chiefs, and to establish the authority of law through the furthest corners of the island. Nobody knew better than he that, if this were not done, great mischiefs would follow. He was content to meet daily emergencies by daily expedients; and he left the rest to his successors. They had to conquer the Highlands in the midst of a war with France and Spain, because he had not regulated the Highlands in a time of profound peace.

Sometimes, in spite of all his caution, he found that measures which he had hoped to carry through quietly had caused great agitation. When this was the case he generally modified or withdrew them. It was thus that he cancelled Wood's patent in compliance with the absurd outcry of the Irish. It was thus that he frittered away the Porteous Bill to nothing, for fear of exasperating the Scotch. It was thus that he abandoned the Excise Bill, as soon as he found that it was offensive to all the great towns of England. The language which he held about that measure in a subsequent session is strikingly characteristic. Pulteney had insinuated that the scheme would be again brought forward. "As to the wicked scheme," said Walpole, "as the gentleman is pleased to call it, which he would persuade gentlemen is not yet laid aside, I, for my part, assure this House I am not so mad as ever again to engage in anything that looks like an Excise; though in my private opinion, I still think

6A bill for inflicting on Edinburgh the punishment due to rioters who had murdered Captain Porteous in the streets.

it was a scheme that would have tended very much to the interest of the nation."

7

The conduct of Walpole with regard to the Spanish war is the great blemish of his public life. "Did the administration of Walpole," says his biographer, "present any uniform principle which may be traced in every part, and which gave combination and consistency to the whole? Yes, and that principle was THE LOVE OF PEACE." It would be difficult, we think, to bestow a higher eulogium on any statesman. But the eulogium is far too high for the merits of Walpole. The great ruling principle of his public conduct was indeed a love of peace, but not in the sense in which his biographer uses the phrase. The peace which Walpole sought was not the peace of the country, but the peace of his own administration. During the greater part of his public life, indeed, the two objects were inseparably connected. At length he was reduced to the necessity of choosing between them, of plunging the State into hostilities for which there was no just ground, and by which nothing was to be got, or of facing a violent opposition in the country, in Parliament, and even in the royal closet. No person was more thoroughly convinced than he of the absurdity of the cry against Spain. But his darling power was at stake, and his choice was soon made. He preferred an unjust war to a stormy session. It is impossible to say of a minister who acted thus that the love of peace was the one grand principle to which all his conduct is to be referred. The governing principle of his conduct was neither love of peace nor love of war, but love of power.

The praise to which he is fairly entitled is this, that he understood the true interest of his country better than any

At the close of Walpole's rule ill-will sprang up between England and Spain: and Walpole, though conscious of the inexpediency of the war, yielded to the popular outcry.

of his contemporaries, and that he pursued that interest whenever it was not incompatible with the interest of his own intense and grasping ambition.

XII.

BATTLE OF PRESTON PANS.

SCOTT.

Under Walpole England gradually learned what freedom really meant. Men enjoyed personal as well as political liberty; justice was fairly administered; while the long peace enabled the country to develop new sources of commercial and industrial wealth. It was this that rendered it deaf to the call of the young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, when he landed in Scotland in 1745. Only the wild clans of the Highlands joined him. But their successes were at first amazing. The young Prince occupied Edinburgh, and boldly advanced on the royal force which lay at Preston Pans. In the early morning he determined to attack it by crossing a morass which protected its flank.]

THE whole of the Highland army got under arms, and moved forward with incredible silence and celerity by the path proposed. A point of precedence was now to be settled, characteristic of the Highlanders. The tribe of MacDonalds, though divided into various families, and serving under various chiefs, still reckoned on their common descent from the great Lords of the Isles, in virtue of which, they claimed, as the post of honour, the right of the whole Highland army in the day of action. This was disputed by some of the other clans, and it was agreed they should cast lots about this point of precedence. Fortune gave it to the Camerons and Stewarts, which was murmured at by the numerous Clan-Colla, the generic name for the MacDonalds.