WALPO

WALPOLE'S EARLY YEARS.

9

of our government. It not only made the administration dependent on the will of Parliament, and through Parliament on the will of the country; but it arrayed Parliament and country into two great parties, the members of which learned to act under certain leaders, and were bound together by their adhesion to certain well understood principles. The Crown was at once weakened and strengthened by the change. It was compelled to part with some of its most cherished prerogatives, and it lost that power of initiation and control which even William the 3rd to a great extent enjoyed. But it ceased to be responsible to the nation for the acts of the Ministry and was gradually raised above the perils of political strife.

Robert Walpole was the third son of a Norfolk squire of good family but moderate estate. He was born at Houghton on the 26th of August, 1676. His early education he received in a small private school at Massingham. Afterwards he was sent to Eton, where he was distinguished by his love of the classics. It is recorded of him that he was specially partial to Horace, who has always been a favourite with English statesmen. He appears to have displayed considerable oratorical aptitude; for when his master was informed that several Etonians, and particularly St. John, were distinguished for their eloquence in the House of Commons, he replied, "But I am impatient to hear that Robert Walpole has spoken, for I am convinced that he will be a good orator." In this forecast, however, he was

ΙΟ

WALPOLE'S ILLNESS.

wrong. Walpole became an effective debater, and a forcible and fluent speaker; but he never possessed the passion and enthusiasm and imagination which are the main elements of the oratorical genius.*

In April, 1696, he entered King's College, Cambridge. There he was seized with small-pox of the most malignant character, and for some time his life was in great danger. His physician, Dr. Brady, scarcely less remarkable for his violent Toryism than for his medical skill, attended him with praiseworthy assiduity, remarking, "We must take care to save this young man, or we shall be accused of having purposely neglected him, because he is so staunch a Whig." He was so delighted with his patient's recovery that he protested, in words Walpole was fond in after life of recalling, that his singular escape was a sure indication of his being reserved for important purposes. The prediction was one which is often made in similar circumstances, but seldom so completely realised as it was in Walpole's instance.

Walpole's elder brothers died while young, and in 1698, becoming heir to the paternal estate, he resigned. his scholarship. He had been intended for the church; of which he would hardly have become a shining ornament, though he was wont to say, with characteristic self-reliance, that, had he taken orders, he would have risen to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Secured from the necessity of working for an independence, he gave

* Mr. Lecky observes that Walpole's long ascendancy was not due to any extraordinary brilliancy of eloquence. "He was a clear and forcible reasoner, ready in reply, and peculiarly successful in financial exposition, but he had little or nothing of the temperament or the talent of an orator."

ENTERS PARLIAMENTARY LIFE.

II

way to the natural indolence of his disposition, and abandoned his literary studies. The future prime minister and most powerful statesman of his age was content to superintend the "improvements" on his father's estate, and sell cattle at the neighbouring markets. His evenings were given up to the riotous festivities in which the English squire was then prone to indulge; and his father was frequently careful to supply him with a double portion of wine. "Come, Robert," he would. say, "you shall drink twice while I drink once; for I will not permit the son, in his sober senses, to be witness to the intoxication of his father."

One of the first duties of the heir to a good estate is to marry; and this duty Walpole fulfilled on the 30th of July, 1700, taking to himself as wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London. By the common consent of her contemporaries, she was a woman of considerable personal charms and of unusual intellectual gifts. A few months later, and through the death of his father, Walpole succeeded to the family inheritance, valued at £2000 a year, a fair income in those days of cheap living. He succeeded also to his father's seat as member for Castle Rising, and represented that borough in the two short parliaments which assembled in the closing years of the reign of William the 3rd.

He entered upon parliamentary life with few of those advantages which a succession of cultivated and accomplished statesmen has taught us nowadays to consider almost indispensable to political renown. Macaulay has summed up his deficiencies with his accustomed skill: "He was not," he says, " a brilliant orator. He was

12

HIS MERITS AND DEFECTS.

not a wit, like Chesterfield, nor a profound scholar, like Carteret. It may be added that he had not, like Somers, a thorough knowledge of constitutional principles. His literature consisted of some reminiscences of his schooling in Latin and Greek; though he could not have translated Homer, like the late Earl of Derby, or written Latin verses, like Mr. Gladstone. His acquaintance with history was so limited, that in an important debate he showed his ignorance of Empson and Dudley. Then we must own that his manners had acquired under the paternal roof at Houghton, a coarseness and a riotousness which drew attention in a coarse and riotous age. When he ceased to talk of politics, his favourite theme was woman; a theme which he discussed with even more than the license of a Wilkes."

But having said thus much, we have said almost all that requires to be said to his disadvantage. It is more than Coxe has said, but less than Smollett. And, in fact, his faults, however deplorable, were the faults of his time, his breeding, and of the social influences around him, rather than of his natural disposition. He shared them with his contemporaries; whereas his admirable qualities were almost all his own. None of the statesmen of his day were so kind of heart, so tolerant of attack, so generous to forgive; just as none were so keenly alive to the best interests of England, or so convinced of the benefits of a pacific policy. In the hottest hours of debate he alone preserved his equanimity, his coolness, his suavity of temper. Fond of power, he was never arrogant. With tastes which inclined him to extravagance of living, his integrity was unimpeachable. He

AS A STATESMAN AND DEBATER.

13

never forgot a friend, and he never took advantage of an enemy. And, be it said to his credit, of cruelty he was incapable. It was he, as even his censors admit, who gave to our Government that character of lenity which it has since generally preserved. The lives of his opponents were frequently in his power; but he had no love of blood, and he invariably spared them.

With few ex

We have said that he was no orator. ceptions,* our orators never make any profound or lasting impression on the House of Commons; a practical matter-of-fact body, which always asks for results, and has no attention to spare for mere rhetoric. But Walpole was all that the House best appreciates; a thorough man-of-business; a ready, clear, and intelligent speaker, with a great faculty of exposition; intimately versed in the forms and traditions of the House; and a most methodical administrator. His statesmanship was the perfection of good sense. He had no imagination, and was never troubled with ideals; but his sagacity was never at fault. He was not a man who saw very far, but what he did see he saw most clearly; and if his policy never touched the probabilities of the future, it was always sufficient for the needs of the present. He did not understand, or at least he could not sympathize with any exalted and enthusiastic motives. of action; he laughed at them as "schoolboy flights." Self-possessed, utilitarian, good-humoured, he was not a Richelieu or an Alberoni, much less a Strafford; but he was the man above all men fitted to govern England

* Mr. Lecky admits only three exceptions; the two Pitts and Mr. Gladstone.