WALPOLE'S ASSAILANTS.

89

refers to Richard Savage, but why should Savage have had a pension? It is affecting to read of half-starved poets; but these poets were sorry rhymesters, and we do not know that the State is bound to offer a premium for bad verse.

Then, again, the more popular and influential writers of the day belonged to the Opposition. Earl Stanhope affects surprise that Walpole made no effort to buy the support of Dean Swift. But the Minister, with his bluff honesty, may have thought the support worth little which could be purchased by an offer of advancement. Swift had satirised him bitterly; yet Walpole, when he visited England in 1726, received him civilly, and asked him to dinner. Why should he have done more? Or why should he have rewarded Gay, who always lampooned him, who libelled him as 'Bob Booty,' in his 'Beggars' Opera' (1727), and heaped upon him the coarsest abuse in Polly,' the sequel to it (1728)? Walpole had little cause to love the writers of the day. Instigated by Bolingbroke, Pulteney, and Chesterfield, they assailed him with the most scandalous invectives, which he bore however with his usual good-humoured composure. His only revenge was to revive the Playhouse Act (in 1737), an Act absolutely necessary to check the licentiousness of the stage. It conferred that power of control on the Lord Chamberlain, which, on the whole, has been exercised with so much discretion and so greatly to the public advantage. Otherwise, if Walpole did not love literature he did not persecute it. He smiled with indifference while a swarm of angry

90

ACCUSATION AGAINST WALPOLE.

pamphleteers and ballad-mongers buzzed about him.* He withheld from them the booty they coveted, but then he did not inflict upon them fines or imprisonment. And eventually the republic of letters was none the worse-rather let us say much the better-for being taught to dispense with the selfish patronage of the Ministers, and accustomed to rely on the disinterested patronage of the public.

The last charge against Walpole which requires to be noticed, is his practice of corruption. It is stated very strongly by Mr. Lecky:-"It was left to Walpole to organise corruption as a system, and make it the normal process of Parliamentary Government." True, he goes on to adduce some justification, or, at least, excuse for the practice. He alleges that it was scarcely possible to manage Parliament without it. "During the century," says Macaulay, "which followed the Restoration, the House of Commons was in that situation in which assemblies must be managed by corruption or cannot be managed at all. It was not held in awe, as of old, by the throne, or, as now by the people. Its power was immense, its constitution oligarchical, and its deliberations were secret. The Government had every conceivable motive to offer bribes; and most of the members, if they were not men of high honour and probity, had little motive for refusing what Government offered." Here, as it

66

* This is admitted even in the violent ballad of The Norfolk Gamester" :—

"Their language opprobrious he calmly did take,
Rememb'ring the proverb that 'losers will speak';
His temper was even, unruffled his mind,

To passion their taunts could not make him inclin'd."

HIS INDEPENDence of corrRUPT SUPPORT. 91

seems to us, the historian enters into an ingenious explanation of a fact which has not been proved! The only evidence in support of this oft-repeated charge of corruption-a charge which everybody can bring is the calumnious writings of Bolingbroke and his army of pamphleteers. We deny that it was necessary for Walpole to resort to bribery. He was one of the strongest Ministers the country has ever seen. During the first years of his Government the Opposition was contemptibly weak; and when it grew strong, he could rely on the support of the Crown and of the commercial and manufacturing classes. Moreover, for many years he was the one independent statesman whom the nation could not afford to get rid of. Crown and people trusted in his financial ability, his political sagacity, his administrative skill, as they could not trust in the unsteady genius of Carteret, or the sparkling declamation of Pulteney. The twenty years that followed his fall did but justify this estimate of the great Minister. It was only when a generation arose that did not understand the value of his services, a generation that was blinded by the dust which the Opposition threw so vigorously into the air, that Walpole's power gave way. We hold, then, that he had no need—and we are sure he was too good an economist-to govern by means of extensive corruption.*

The Committee of Inquiry, appointed by unscrupulous enemies for the single purpose of heaping up accusations

* His saying that "all these men (i.e., a particular knot of politicians) have their price," has been converted into the sweeping statement that "all men have their price."

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THE COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY.

against the dethroned Minister, utterly failed to substantiate this scandal. So much is admitted by Lord Stanhope, who treats Walpole's memory with a halting generosity. "If," he says, "his acts of bribery and corruption had been of such common and daily occurrence as his enemies had urged-nay, even if they approached in any degree to the representations of them-it is impossible that a band of determined enemies, armed with all ordinary power, should have failed to bring to light a considerable number. Instead of these the Report could only allege that during one election at Weymouth, a place had been promised to the mayor and a living to his brother; and that some revenue officers who refused to vote for the ministerial candidate had been dismissed. It denounces a certain contract as fraudulent, because the contractors had gained 14 per cent., forgetting that large profit in one case is often required to counterbalance total loss in another. It then proceeds to express some loose suspicions as to the application of the sum for secret and special services. . . On the whole, this Report of the Committee from which so much had been expected, instead of exciting indignation against the Minister, rather drew ridicule upon themselves, and as we are told by a contemporary, was received by the public with contempt."

For our part, we have been unable to find any satisfactory evidence that Walpole often expended the public money in the purchase of hostile votes or the reward of venal supporters. The calumnies of Smollett or of the 'Craftsman,' too hastily taken up and repeated as if they

WALPOLE COMPARATIVELY INNOCENT. 93

were proofs, must be dismissed as worthless by impartial minds. Undoubtedly, by his Government, as by all governments, resource was occasionally had to the tactics by which the wavering are confirmed and the faithful encouraged. It cannot be denied that he dealt to some extent in the purchase of small boroughs. But we repeat that no evidence exists to justify the charge of wholesale corruption so constantly brought against Walpole's administration.