1741 WALPOLE DEFEATS THE OPPOSITION. 367 XXII. found itself hampered by a war with Spain and bound by its CHAP. guarantee of the pragmatic sanction to face a probable coalition arrayed against Austria, an opportunity offered itself for the first personal attack upon Walpole. This attack was led on February 13, 1741, by Carteret in the lords and by Sandys in the commons. After arraigning the whole policy of Walpole, domestic as well as foreign, a motion was made for an address to the crown to remove him "from His Majesty's presence and counsels for ever". Pelham and Henry Fox were Walpole's chief apologists, but the most masterly defence was that of the minister himself. He defended himself against the invidious charge, formulated afterwards by the pen of Bolingbroke in the protest of the defeated minority of the peers, that he had made himself "a sole or even a first minister". As in this connexion the ominous name of Strafford was mentioned, such an accusation was at that epoch of constitutional developement one of grave moment. In the house of lords, where the Prince of Wales was present but did not vote, the motion was defeated by eighty-one to fifty-four votes. In the commons Shippen, at the head of thirty-four Jacobites, walked out of the house, so that the opposition, who had been handing round lists of the incoming ministry, found themselves defeated by 290 to 106 votes. The defection of Shippen did not, indeed, decide the battle, but in Chesterfield's phrase," it broke the opposition to pieces". Recent discoveries of letters1 establish that since 1734 Walpole had been playing off the Jacobites against the rest of the opposition by an indirect correspondence with the pretender, carried on with the cognizance of the king. Notwithstanding majorities in parliament, in the country at large the ministry was falling into increasing unpopularity. Maria Theresa having summoned the king as elector to support her against Prussia and France, he repaired to Hanover in May, despite Walpole's remonstrances, and in September, in a fit of alarm, without consulting the cabinet in London, hastily negotiated a treaty for the neutrality of the electorate, a step possibly necessary but involving him in a torrent of obloquy. Parliament was dissolved on April 27, 1741. In the new 1 1 Hodgkin MSS., p. 235, Hist. MSS. Comm., 1897. See also the author's article "Walpole, Sir Robert," in the Dict. Nat. Biog. XXII. CHAP. parliament Dodington estimated the opposition as but sixteen short of the ministerialists. During the interval before the session began the tide of Walpole's unpopularity still shewed signs of rising. From abroad came the ill news of Cartagena in October and the failure of the enterprise against Cuba. Losses of merchantmen captured by Spanish vessels of war were constantly reported. Bankruptcies were of "daily" occurrence, if we may accept the rhetoric of William Murray, who in 1738 had distinguished himself by his speech in the house of commons upon the merchants' petition concerning the Spanish depredations. In the beginning of December Haddock was compelled by the inferiority of his force to retire before a Spanish and French fleet to Port Mahon and another naval failure was added to the debit of the ministry. But the decisive blow to Walpole's credit was the news of the treaty for the neutrality of Hanover, though in this he had been compelled to a reluctant acquiescence in an accomplished fact. The new parliament met on December 1, 1741. The tum of the balance between the two parties would be determined by the results of the trials of election petitions. On December 17 ministerialists returned for Bossiney were unseated by six votes and five days later those for Westminster by four (220) to 216). The victories of the opposition were celebrated by bonfires all over the town. Unless some diversion could be effected, it was plain that the ministry was doomed. Modern usage might demand resignation; but resignation which now, at the worst, means retirement was likely, as Horace Walpole said, to mean the Tower, and he tells us that, when defeat came, people hired windows in the city to see the fallen minister pass by. It is mere pedantry to apply modern conventions to a time when a man's fortune and perhaps his life were at stake. On January 21, 1742, Pulteney delivered his long-expected attack, by moving to refer to a secret committee the papers relating to the war. Walpole replied with astonishing vigour and effect, and was supported by Pelham, Winnington, and Yonge. The ministry was victorious, with the assistance of two deserters from the tories, by 253 to 250 votes. On the 28th upon a point arising out of the Chippenham election petition, it was placed in a minority of one. The final struggle over that election was to take place on February 2, 1742 DEFEAT AND RESIGNATION OF WALPOLE. 369 and on Sunday, January 31, Walpole made up his mind to CHAP. resign. Rumours had apparently got about, for on the division XXII the ministry was beaten by 241 to 225. On February 9 Walpole was created Earl of Orford, and on the 11th he resigned all his offices. But so notorious was the confidence reposed in him by the king that neither party regarded him as an extinct force in politics. "All cry out," wrote Horace Walpole, "that he is still minister behind the curtain." The new Earl of Orford's first care was to paralyse the opposition. He advised the king to offer Pulteney the headship of the administration on condition that he should not be impeached. Pulteney replied that he was "not a man of blood". But Pulteney made three mistakes. He had failed to learn the lesson which Walpole first taught the nation, that the seat of power was the house of commons; he assumed that he could air the disinterestedness of his "patriotism" by refusing office, and yet by a seat in the cabinet retain a guiding hand upon the helm of government; and he yielded to the king's wish to make as few changes as possible in the ministry. Among a numerous party hungry for their share of the spoils, such a concession was certain to produce heart-burnings. His nominations were the Earl of Wilmington as first lord of the treasury, Sandys as chancellor of the exchequer, Carteret as secretary for the northern department in the place of Harrington, who was to be president of the council, and a few other minor officials; among them Sir John Hynde Cotton, a Jacobite, on the board of admiralty. The real head of the administration was Carteret, who, after Walpole, possessed the king's confidence. Carteret's mind, like Pulteney's, had no place for personal rancour. But smaller men hoped to win a name by driving on measures against Walpole, and the tories, in resentment at their exclusion, joined in a persecution likely to embarrass the new ministry. A motion by Lord Limerick for an inquiry "into the conduct of Robert Earl of Orford during the last ten years," was carried by 252 to 245 votes, and a secret committee of twenty-one was appointed by ballot, of whom not more than two were supporters of the fallen minister. Limerick himself was elected chairman. Flushed with expectations of startling disclosures and 24 CHAP. conscious of the necessity of substantiating their oft-repeated XXII. charges of peculation and corruption, the committee of secrecy entered with ardour upon their inquiry. The outcome of their investigations was insignificant—some alleged promises of places to voters and financial assistance to candidates at two or three contested elections; a charge of conspiracy to defraud, because the contractors who undertook to furnish the pay to the troops in the expedition against Cartagena gained 14 per cent.; an expenditure of secret service money computed at a million and a half in ten years; the subsidising of newspapers to the extent of £50,000 in ten years, a practice which had been long maintained by successive administrations. A conclusion so lame and impotent provoked a reaction of opinion in favour of Orford. When in the autumn session an endeavour was made to revive the inquiry, even the eloquence of Pitt, who had been foremost in his animosity, failed to carry the house with him, and the motion was rejected on December 1 by 253 to 186. In proportion as the credit of Orford was raised, the credit of Pulteney fell. At the end of the session he made up his mind to go to the upper house, and on July 16 was created Earl of Bath. Some promotions of his friends followed, the most important among them being the substitution of Lord Gower, a tory, for Lord Hervey, as lord privy seal. Orford welcomed his old opponent in the house of lords with, "You and I are now two as insignificant men as any in England". Pulteney's acceptance of a peerage, said to have been pressed upon him by the king at Orford's instance, seemed to the people to give the lie to his repeated professions of disinterestedHe was bespattered with virulent abuse and derided in a succession of witty vers de société from the facile pen of Hanbury Williams. ness. CHAPTER XXIII. THE CARTERET ADMINISTRATION. XXIII. AT the accession of Carteret to the direction of foreign affairs, CHAP. a change of the fortune of war in favour of Maria Theresa was in full progress, but an Austrian defeat at Chotusitz, on May 17, 1742, promised a renewal of the French ascendancy in Germany and Bohemia. The haughty spirit of Maria Theresa now stooped to consider the surrender of Silesia, while prudence prescribed to Frederick contentment with his acquisitions under the guarantee of Great Britain and the States-general. Under Carteret's instructions a settlement was effected by the treaty of Breslau, of which the preliminaries were signed on June 11. The treaty restored Great Britain to credit as a mediator in continental politics, and conferred on Carteret the reputation of being the most brilliant foreign minister in Europe. In the meanwhile the rival ambitions of Elisabeth Farnese and Charles Emanuel of Sardinia to carve kingdoms out of the Austrian possessions in Italy were working apace. The failure of Admiral Haddock, in face of the threatening attitude of a French fleet, to prevent the transport of troops from Spain had been followed in December, 1741, by the landing of 14,000 Spaniards on Genoese territory. Don Carlos had already welcomed a Spanish army at Naples. The complete ascendancy of Spain in Italy was as dangerous to Charles Emanuel as that of France in Germany to Frederick of Prussia. In March, 1742, his position was strengthened by the dispatch of an English fleet to the Mediterranean under the command of Vice-Admiral Mathews, who was also accredited to him as plenipotentiary. The accession of Sardinia to the cause of Maria Theresa would enable England to strike a blow at Spain in the north of Italy, while |