605 



WALPOLE, SIR ROBERT. 



WALPOLE, HORACE. 



606 



facture. The plan itself and the arguments by which he supported it 

 prove the soundness of his views of taxation and commerce ; but 

 unhappily the measure was artfully misrepresented as a scheme for a 

 general Excise, and the country being misled by the able writers 

 opposed to the minister, by the clamours of those interested in exist- 

 ing abuses, but more than all by the unpopular name of 'Excise,' were 

 almost unanimous in its condemnation. Public feeling became at 

 length so excited that a popular outbreak seemed to threaten any 

 further progress with the bill ; and Sir Robert was very reluctantly 

 obliged to abandon it. He was fully persuaded of its great advantages 

 to the country, but said, ''I will not be the minister to enforce taxes at 

 the expense of blood." 



In 1737 the influence of Walpole was much shaken, first by the 

 quarrel between the king and the Prince of Wales, and-the avowed 

 hostility of the latter to the king's government, and especially to 

 Walpole, who had been chiefly consulted by the king ; and, secondly, 

 by the death of Queen Caroline. The high regard of the queen for 

 Walpole was testified even on her death-bed. Turning to the minister, 

 who, with the king, was standing by her bedside, she said to him, " I 

 hope you will never desert ihe king, but continue to serve him with 

 your usual fidelity ; " and, pointing to the king, she added, " I recom- 

 mend his majesty to you." Shortly afterwards the king showed Wal- 

 pole an intercepted letter, in which it was affirmed that the minister 

 had now lost his sole protector. " It is i'alse," said he; " you remember 

 that on her death-bed the queen recommended me to you." 



Walpole was soon in the midst of great embarrassments. The king, 

 the people, a strong minority in the Commons, a majority in the Lords, 

 and a preponderance in the cabinet, were eager for war with Spain. 

 Walpole endeavoured to avert it as a national calamity, but was over- 

 powered by the union of so many parties in its favour. He then felt 

 how much his popularity had suffered from his opposition to the war, 

 and feared that any failures would be laid to his charge. He entreated 

 the permission of the king to resign, but his majesty exclaimed, " Will 

 you desert me in my greatest difficulties?" and refused to accept his 

 resignation. In the midst of the discussions upon the Spanish war, 

 he had also been deserted by the Duke of Argyle, whose talents in 

 debate and personal influence became a serious obstacle to his 

 measures. Discord ensued in the cabinet, and the opposition in 

 parliament became more strenuous than ever. In February 1740 a 

 motion was made, by Sandys, for an address to the crown for the 

 removal of Sir Robert Walpole " from his majesty's presence and 

 counsels for ever." No distinct charges were made against the 

 minister to justify so strong an address ; but every complaint 

 against the measures of his government, foreign or domestic, during 

 the last twenty years, was used as a reason for his dismissal. " If it 

 should be asked," says Sandys, " why I impute all these evils to one 

 person, I reply, because one person grasped in his own hands every 

 branch of government ; that one person has attained the sole direction 

 of affairs, monopolised all the favours of the crown, compassed the 

 disposal of all places, pensions, titles, ribands, as well as all prefer- 

 ments, civil, military, and ecclesiastical." Walpole defended himself 

 with becoming boldness and dignity, and referred with pride to the 

 successes of his administration . The motion was negatived by a large 

 majority, and a similar motion in the House of Lords met with the 

 game fate. But, notwithstanding this triumph, his power was nearly 

 exhausted. A dissolution immediately followed ; his opponents were 

 active at the elections ; many of his friends kept back ; he himself was 

 indolently confident of success ; and on the meeting of the new par- 

 liament he found himself in a bare majority. After several close 

 divisions, he was, on the 2nd of February 1742, left in a minority of 

 sixteen, on the Chippenham election case. On the 9th he was created 

 Earl of Orford by the king, and on the llth he resigned. On taking 

 leave of him the king burst into tears, expressed his regret for the loss 

 of so faithful a counsellor, and his gratitude for his long services. 



No sooner was a new administration formed under Pulteney (which, 

 through the influence and address of Walpole, had been composed 

 chiefly of Whigs), than an attack was made upon the ex-minister. On 

 the 9th of March, Lord Limerick moved in the House of Commons 

 for a secret committee to inquire into the administration of Sir Robert 

 Walpole during the last twenty years, but his motion was lost by a 

 majority of two. Lord Limerick very soon made a second motion, 

 but proposed to include only the last ten years in his inquiry. This 

 motion was carried by a majority of seven, and a committee of secresy 

 was appointed. Of the twenty-one members of this committee, nomi- 

 nated by ballot, all except two had been Walpole's uniform opponents. 

 The committee, failing to obtain the evidence of corruption which 

 they had expected, endeavoured to pass a bill of indemnity to all 

 persons who would make discoveries, but this invidious and unjust 

 measure was rejected by the House of Lords. The committee never- 

 theless made a report, in which they charged Walpole 1, with having 

 used undue influence at elections ; 2, with grants of fraudulent con- 

 tracts ; and, 3, with peculation and profusion in the expenditure of 

 the secret service money. These charges were but ill supported, and 

 considering the clamours that had been raised against the minister, 

 the decided enmity of the committee, and the ample means at their 

 disposal, the report must be regarded, if wot as a verdict of acquittal, 

 at least as one of not proven. A motion for renewing the inquiry was 

 repeated in. the following session, but was defeated by a large majority. 



From this time Walpole took very little part in public affairs. He 

 was frequently consulted by the king, and retained much political 

 influence, but rarely epoke in the House of Lords, having observed to 

 his brother that he had left his tongue with the Commons. After 

 dreadful suffering from the stone, which he bore with admirable forti- 

 tude, he died on the 18th of March 1745, in the sixty-ninth year of 

 his age, and was buried in the parish church at Houghton. 



The character of no public man has ever been more misrepresented 

 than that of Walpole. He had the misfortune to be actively opposed 

 by the first wits of his day. The brilliant talents of Bolingbroke, 

 Chesterfield, Swift, and Pope, filled the press with sarcasms, and mis- 

 led the public by the most artful misconstruction of his acts. Even 

 the stage was made subservient to opposition. In parliament he also 

 had able opponents, men of greater talents and acquirements than 

 himself, but not perhaps more able and ready in debate. Supported 

 as they were by the literary talents of their friends, and having more 

 plausible and popular topics to dilate upon, they succeeded in main- 

 taining a perpetual outcry against the minister. How far he deserved 

 it may in some measure be judged from the fact that no points of his 

 policy met with so much execration as his Excise scheme and his 

 resistance to the Spanish war ; both of which have since been 

 applauded by posterity. As regards the corruption with which he 

 was charged, Burke affirmed that he was less chargeable with it than, 

 any minister who ever served the crown for so great a length of time. 

 At all events the Commons, being then comparatively unrestrained by 

 popular election, were more open to corruption than at the present 

 day, and the low morality of the times encouraged it. The extremely 

 difficult circumstances in which Walpole was placed by the claims of 

 the Pretender and the unpopularity of the house of Hanover, must 

 also be pleaded in his justification. His zeal for the Protestant suc- 

 cession was certainly the mam principle of his political life and 

 administration. The same great authority who vindicated him from 

 the charge of systematic corruption thus sums up his services : 

 " The prudence, steadiness, and vigilance of that man, joined to the 

 greatest possible lenity in his character and his politics, preserved the 

 crown to this royal family, and with it their laws and liberties to this 

 country." (Burke's ' Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,' p. 63.) 



In private life he was distinguished by his hearty good nature and 

 social dispositions. His conversation and manners were somewhat 

 coarse and boisterous, but he had the happy art of making friends, and 

 great powers of persuasion. For business of all kinds he had an 

 extraordinary capacity, and the ease with which he executed it led 

 Lord Hervey to say that " he did everything with the same ease and 

 tranquillity as if he was doing nothing." 



WALPOLE, HORACE, Earl of Orford, was the third and youngest 

 son of Sir Robert Walpole, by Catherine Shorter, his first wife, and 

 was born on the 5th of October 1717. When he had finished his 

 education at Eton, and at King's College, Cambridge, he left England 

 and travelled on the Continent for more than two years. For the 

 greater part of this time he was accompanied by Gray, the poet, with 

 whom he had formed a friendship at school ; but a difference unfor- 

 tunately arose between the two friends, and they parted at Reggio, in 

 July 17-11, and returned to England by different routes. On his 

 return home, in September 1741, Walpole took his seat in the House 

 of Commons as member for Calliugton, for which place he had been 

 elected during his absence. His father's administration was at that 

 time in the midst of the difficulties which shortly afterwards caused 

 its downfall, and he could not fail to be deeply interested in all that 

 passed. He did not however take any prominent part in the debates. 

 His first speech was delivered in March 1742, on a motion for inquiring 

 into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole for the preceding ten years of 

 his administration, and was favourably noticed by Mr. Pitt, afterwards 

 Lord Chatham, and by Seeker, at that time Bishop of Oxford. When 

 the interest excited by his father's affairs had subsided, he was very 

 rarely induced to address the House. He moved the address in 

 1751, and spoke in 1756 on the question of employing Swiss regiments 

 in the colonies. In 1757 he exerted himself with much ardour in 

 favour of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. These are the chief events 

 of his public life, although he remained in parliament till 1768, a 

 period of twenty-eight years. In 1744 he had exchanged his seat for 

 Callington for Castle Rising; and from 1754 he represented King's 

 Lynn, the borough which had returned his father for many years to 

 parliament. Public life was not suited to Horace Walpole's pursuits 

 and tastes, but he was always much interested in politics. His family 

 connections had early identified him with the Whig party, but his 

 speculations verged upon republicanism. To show his reverence for 

 popular rights and his affected hatred of kings, he hung up in his 

 bedroom an engraving of the death-warrant of Charles I., and wrote 

 upon it, "Magna Charta." These abstract opinions however were not 

 likely to lead him into any practical extravagance, for his habits and 

 temper of mind were fastidiously aristocratic. 



The principal amusement and business of Walpole for many years 

 of his life were the building and decoration of his Gothic villa of 

 Strawberry Hill, at Twickenham. It was originally a cottage, which 

 he purchased in 1747, but grew under his hands into a so-called 

 mansion of considerable extent. It would be difficult to compliment 

 his taste in architecture, but the Gothic style was not at that time in 

 vogue, and many faults and absurdities which are now apparent at 



