the Government instead of the vast number of the old annuitants, and receive five per cent. interest instead of seven or eight per cent., which those annuitants had received.

(4) Other Companies and even the Bank of England came forward and made similar offers, but in the end the Government accepted the proposal of the South Sea Company. To raise the vast sum of seven and a half millions, new shares were issued, and so bright were the prospects of the Company, and so eager was everybody to buy shares, that in a few months shares originally worth £100 reached the fabulous price of £1000.

Meanwhile a kind of mania for speculation seems to have seized the nation. "London was in a state of ferment." 'Change Alley became the scene of the wildest excitement, and the very streets were converted into counting-houses. Men of all ranks, ages, and professions jostled each other in the general race for wealth. Noblemen sold their estates, clergyinen and widows converted their savings into South Sea Company Stock. Even the Prince of Wales figured before the public as the Chairman of a Welsh copper company. The glowing accounts of the success which had attended the Louis Mississippi Scheme in Paris, increased the confidence which the public had placed in the South Sea Company, and with it the rage for speculation. New companies, "like mushrooms round a rotten tree," were springing into existence, some perfectly absurd, others “sensible but premature." One was for a wheel for perpetual motion to be utilized in machinery, another for transmitting quicksilver into a malleable metal, another for importing a number of large jackasses from Spain, others for extracting silver from lead, oil from sun-flowers, smelting iron by means of pit-coal, while one ingenious projector asked the public to take shares in an undertaking, “the nature of which would be revealed in due time.”

(5) The Bubble bursts. Consequent misery, and the overthrow of the Stanhope-Sunderland Ministry, 1720. "Many of these companies, being unchartered, were illegal, and had no right to issue shares, and the legitimate companies, especially the South Sea, looked with jealousy at their illegal competitors. Apparently unconscious how much their own success depended upon the universal delusion, they proceeded to prosecute some companies which had acted

illegally. The effect was instantaneous. The nation began to return to its senses; the bubble burst, and the stocks of all unchartered companies fell with extreme rapidity. In the universal ruin they carried with them the South Sea Company. The panic was as rapid as the eagerness to purchase had been. Before the end of September, South Sea stock was at 175" (BRIGHT).

The misery which followed upon the crash was universal;' thousands of men and women of every class were reduced to beggary. The nation was loud in its cry for vengeance; indignation meetings were held everywhere; one peer asked that the directors should be sewn up in sacks and thrown into the Thames; and so intense was the general excitement that Parliament was compelled to institute an inquiry. It was found that not only had many of the directors practised bribery and fraud, but that several members of the Ministry had made large sums of money by speculation, and had accepted bribes to secure the passing of the Bill. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was found guilty of “notorious and infamous corruption," and expelled the House. Stanhope, the Prime Minister, although he was little concerned in the affair, was attacked in the House with such violence by the Duke of Wharton, that, while attempting to reply, in the heat of passion he fell down in an apoplectic fit and died shortly after. Craggs, the Postmaster-General, committed suicide before the inquiry was completed; Sunderland was pronounced innocent, but public opinion was so strong against him that he was compelled to leave the Ministry.

(6) Sir R. Walpole restores public credit. The only man to whom the nation could look to restore public credit was Sir R. Walpole, and he accomplished his difficult task with comparative success.

(a) The estates of the fraudulent directors, amounting to something like £2,000,000, were confiscated and applied to the benefit of the sufferers.

(b) The Company was let off the payment of the seven and a half millions due to the Government, and was deprived of all further management of the National Debt.

SECTION V.---RISE OF WALPOLE.

The breaking-up of the Stanhope-Sunderland Ministry left Walpole head of affairs. He is the first to whom the title of "Prime Minister" is usually given.

NOTE.

The office of Prime Minister is not a 66 legal" one. It is merely a "title of courtesy, and is given to the person who is asked by the sovereign to form a cabinet."

(1) Walpole's life is an integral part of the history of the nation. He was descended from an ancient Norfolk family, and was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Early in life he had entered Parliament, and in Anne's reign he had won a place among the statesmen of his time, as Secretary of War.

(2) His character. Walpole was a clear-headed, practical, business-like statesman, with an extensive knowledge of finance. He was coarse and rough in his speech and manners, deplorably ignorant of book-learning, and loved neither "reading nor writing." The weak side of his character is seen in his inordinate fondness for keeping the power in his own hands, and in his extreme jealousy of able men. He could brook no opposition to his wishes, and turned out of office any colleague who refused to obey him, or who held opinions contrary to his own.

For twenty-one years he was Prime Minister of England. He maintained his political influence mainly by bribery and corruption, "by bestowing places, pensions, and hard cash," and he was "the first who made parliamentary corruption a regular part of his system of government." His opinion of men's moral principles was very low, and may be summed up in his own words, Every man has his price." His influence on politics generally was decidedly bad. He raised undeserving men to power both in Church and State, merely to gain their support.

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(3) His policy. Walpole advocated a peace policy. "The most pernicious circumstances," he said, "in which this country can be are those of war, as we must be losers while it lasts, and cannot be great gainers when it ends." His peace policy was on the whole highly beneficial to England :

(a) It was the best security against Jacobite intrigue, and gave stability to the Hanoverian Succession and the Constitutional Government.

(b) It gave the country the rest it so much needed, after it had passed through the stormy periods of the Great Rebellion and the Revolution.

(c) It convinced the people, that a settled and orderly government was the best guarantee for the commercial prosperity of the country and the well-being of its inhabitants.

NOTE. On the other hand, the administration of Walpole is a mere blank in the annals of political and social reform. "I am no reformer," he used to say, and he always acted on the principle of letting well alone." His only great attempt at legislature was his Excise Bill, and that ended in a complete failure.

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1. Bishop Atterbury's Plot, 1722. This conspiracy proved that the Jacobites as a political body were not yet extinct. Their hopes were raised by

(1) The birth of a grandson of James II., Charles Edward, afterwards called the Young Pretender.

(2) The unsettled state of the country consequent on the failure of the South Sea Scheme.

(3) The idea that George I. was tired of his English throne. It is even said, that the Pretender offered to secure for him the title of the King of Hanover, if he would retire from England in his favour.

The conspiracy was entrusted to five persons in England, of whom Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester was the most prominent. The conspirators had asked assistance of the Regent of Orleans, who betrayed their intentions to the British Government. Atterbury was arrested, and although he made an able and eloquent defence before the House of Lords, a Bill of Pains and Penalties was passed against him, and he was banished.

2. Quarrel between Walpole and Carteret, 1724. The quarrel between Walpole and Carteret, one of the Secretaries of State, reveals the weak side of Walpole's character. Carteret was the ablest diplomatist of the day, a man of “most brilliant parts and of unrivalled knowledge of foreign affairs." The influence which, from his intimate knowledge of German, he had acquired over the King roused Walpole's jealousy, and he soon procured his downfall. Carteret was forced to resign his secretaryship, and was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. NOTE.-In 1725 Walpole quarrelled with Pulteney, a man of somewhat irascible temper, but said to be the greatest orator that had ever appeared in the House of Commons. Disappointed at the

little promotion he had received, Pulteney retired from the Ministry in high dudgeon, and flung himself into the ranks of the Opposition. He allied himself with Bolingbroke, who had returned to England, and the two statesmen began to organize a systematic opposition against the existing Ministry. Pulteney became the leader of the party in the House known as the Patriots (see page 67). Bolingbroke under the name of " Humphrey Oldcastle" attacked Walpole in a paper called the Craftsman, "the first regular opposition newspaper," and the forerunner of a long series of suchlike literary productions.

3. Wood's Halfpence, 1723. There was a great need of a new copper coinage in Ireland, and a patent had been granted by Walpole to William Wood, a great、 English iron-master, giving him power to coin halfpence and farthings to the value of £108,000. Specimens of the new coinage were tested and approved of by Sir I. Newton, master of the Mint. Swift, however, who was Dean of St. Patrick's, and was only waiting for an opportunity to scourge his old enemies the Whigs, wrote against the new coinage in his famous “Drapier's Letters." In these letters he said that the new coinage was base, and would be forced upon the Irish by an army of English soldiers. These statements, in spite of their want of truthfulness, worked upon the minds of the Irish people to such an alarming extent that Walpole was compelled to withdraw the coinage.

4. Last Days of George I.

(1) First Treaty of Vienna, 1725. This was an alliance between Austria and Spain against France, in which Austria pledged herself (a) to use her influence to the utmost to secure the restoration of Gibraltar to Spain; (b) to assist the Stuart family in regaining the throne.

(2) To meet this threatening alliance a counter-alliance was formed at Hanover between England, France, and Prussia for mutual protection and assistance.

(3) The war which followed was the most eventless in our history, and after an unsuccessful attack was made on Gibraltar, 1727, peace was signed at Seville.

NOTE. This alliance with France had a twofold effect-(a) It materially weakened the influence of the Jacobite cause; (6) It gave the Hanoverian kings time and opportunity to strengthen themselves on the English throne.

Death of the King. George I. died suddenly of apoplexy, while travelling in his carriage on his way to Hanover.