to unite for ever. Alberoni, eager to upset the Treaty of Utrecht, and to restore the Spanish power in Italy, sought for allies in the old enemies, Sweden and Russia, both of which powers were coming to terms, and had interests in Germany clashing with those of Hanover. War soon broke out. A Spanish force rapidly conquered Sardinia and Sicily from the Emperor and the new King of Sicily, but the defeat of the Spanish fleet by Admiral Byng off Cape Passaro in Sicily (11th Aug. 1718) put an end to Alberoni's Italian plans. An attempt to get up a new Jacobite rising in Scotland was a complete failure. Up to now Austria had been quarrelling with the Dutch about the Barrier Treaty (by which the fortresses of the Austrian Netherlands were garrisoned by Dutch troops), but she was frightened by the danger of her Italian possessions into joining the Triple Alliance, which thus became the Quadruple Alliance. In 1718 the death of Charles XII., the last great Swedish king, an ambitious, energetic, and fearless soldier, destroyed the power of Sweden in Europe, and broke up the northern combination against England. In 1719 Alberoni fell through a Court intrigue. Next year peace was re

stored. The chief result of the movement was that Sicily went to Austria in exchange for Sardinia. Henceforth the Duke of Savoy (King of Sicily since the Treaty of Utrecht) is called King of Sardinia.

10. The year 1720 was marked by a great wave of speculation and risky ventures in trade. Peace had restored public confidence, and people were looking The South Sea out for good profits for the money they were Bubble, 1720. willing to lay out. At London the South Sea scheme, and in Paris the Mississippi scheme, started by a scheming Scotchman named Law, were thought to be the quickest ways to get rich. The South Sea Company had been formed by Harley in 1711, and had been given all the rights of trade with Spanish America that were allowed to England by the Treaty of Utrecht. It had been very successful as a trading company, and its shares were much sought for. It now tried to widen its business by bribing the Government to give it the management of the National Debt, which had hitherto belonged to the Bank of England. Now the Government wanted to profit by the peace to lessen the rate of interest on the debt, as it could get money cheaper now that peace and the Protestant succession were safe. So it gladly took the seven and a half millions that the South Sea Company offered for this privilege. The way the

Company hoped to win its money back was by persuading everybody to exchange their Government funds for South Sea stock. The inducement held out was the wonderful profits to be won by the South Sea trade. The plan was successful. People got so eager to buy up South Sea stock that its price went up from £100 to £1000. Side by side with this grew up an extraordinary madness for speculation. A contemporary ballad thus describes the scramble for wealth in 'Change Alley (near St. Paul's) :—

came.

"In London stands a famous pile,

And near that pile an alley,
Where merry crowds for riches toil,
And wisdom stoops to folly.
Here stars and garters do appear,
Among our lords the rabble,
To buy and sell, to see and hear
The Jews and Gentiles squabble.
Here crafty courtiers are too wise

For those who trust to fortune;
They see the cheat with clearer eyes
Who peep behind the curtain.
Our greatest ladies hither come
And ply in chariots daily,
Oft pawn their jewels for a sum
To venture 't in the alley.

The lucky rogues, like spaniel dogs,
Leap into South Sea water,

And there they fish for golden frogs
Not caring what comes after.'

Cunning projectors now started silly bubble companies, such as companies for importing jackasses from Spain, for a wheel of perpetual motion, for making salt water fresh, and even "for an undertaking which should in due time be revealed." Foolish people were found to invest their money in the most foolish of them. But before long the reaction The South Sea Company was so afraid of the effect of these bubble companies on its own shares that it began to attack some of them as illegal. This was enough to show the folly of the whole thing. The bubble companies collapsed at once. The South Sea shares tumbled down from £1000 to £135, and those who bought them at the high price found their property shrunk up to one-eighth of its former amount. Many rogues had made money, and many honest but silly people had lost all they had. Great distress followed. The blame was thrown on the Government, and it was found out that many members of it had made large sums out of the public ruin. They were fiercely attacked.

Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was turned out of Parliament as guilty of "the most notorious, dangerous, and infamous corruption." Craggs, the Postmaster-General, committed suicide. His son, the Secretary, luckily died of the small-pox. Stanhope fell down in a fit in the House of Lords, and died the next day. Sunderland withdrew from office after being acquitted on the charges of corruption brought against him. The leaders of the schism of 1717 profited by the fall of their rivals. Already restored to office in 1720, Walpole became in 1721 First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Townshend, his brother-in-law, succeeded Stanhope as Secretary of State. The death of Sunderland in 1722 healed the last traces of the schism. Public credit was soon restored by Walpole's judicious measures. The directors of the South Sea Company were disgraced and ruined, to satisfy popular indignation. The state forgave nearly all the seven millions due to it from the Company, and this, along with the forfeited estates of the directors, enabled it to pay its debts. A long calm succeeded the storm.

11. In 1719 another attempt at a Jacobite rising in the Highlands was put down at Glenshiel. In 1722 a Jacobite plot failed, and led to the exile of its prime mover, Atterbury, the turbulent High Church Bishop of Rochester. In 1727 George I. died when on a visit to his Death of German dominions. He had married in 1682 George I., 1727. his cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, but she had been divorced on a charge of unfaithfulness in 1694, and had been shut up in the Castle of Ahlden until her death in 1726. He was succeeded by his son, George, Prince of Wales.

CHAPTER IV.

George II. and Walpole, 1727-1748.

1. George II. was born in 1683, and unhappily remained a thorough German in his habits. He could however speak English fluently, and knew much more about George II., English affairs than his father. Yet "he hated 1727-60. the English," says the courtier Lord Hervey, as all kingkillers and republicans, and grudged them their liberty as

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well as their wealth." He was prudent, careful, regular and punctilious. He said himself "that little things affected him more than great ones." He was vain and selfish, and "the fire of his temper appeared in every look and gesture." He was, however, straightforward and just, a good man of business and a brave soldier. He despised learning, and was very greedy of money. "I do not believe," says Hervey, that there ever lived a man to whose temper benevolence was so absolutely a stranger." He was coarse and immoral in his private life, but his clever wife, Caroline of Anspach, always had more power over him than the Countess of Suffolk and his other favourites.

"You may strut, dapper George, but 'twill all be in vain,
We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you that reign."

Caroline was a shrewd, honest, true-hearted woman, with plenty of common-sense, no romantic ideas, and some cultivation. She had a taste for theology and philosophy, and delighted to surround herself with learned and sensible men. She wisely kept Walpole in power, though George would have liked to have given his place to Sir Spencer Compton, an incompetent courtier.

Ministry, 1721-42.

2. The twenty years of Walpole's (after 1725 Sir Robert Walpole) ministry best show the strength and the weakness of the rule of the great Whig houses. Walpole Walpole's held his mastery over his party by a singular mixture of practical wisdom, honesty, and corruption. He was no orator, though an apt and ready debater, with a complete understanding of the forms and the temper of the House, an extraordinary power of managing men, and a complete mastery of the arts of intrigue. He answered the denunciations of a factious opposition by retorting, "All these men have their price." He laughed at decorum, at honesty, at purity, and he did little to raise the tone of public life. He tried nothing heroic, but won his way by dint of tact and good sense. He brought the country gentry round from Jacobitism to support the new dynasty. He kept the merchants and tradesmen Whigs by his sound commercial and financial measures. He conciliated the Dissenters, though he avoided vexing the Church. He kept in touch with public opinion. Let sleeping dogs lie" and quieta non movere were his favourite maxims. He shunned violent changes, and aimed at good administration, not brilliant legislation. Called to power to restore the national credit,

Walpole never failed as a financier. He started a Sinking Fund to save the Whigs from the reproach of the national debt, but soon made inroads upon it that he might please the squires by cutting down the land tax. He changed the malt tax into a tax on beer, and persevered despite formidable riots in Scotland (1724). But a different fate met his famous Excise Scheme (1733). This was a plan to turn the customs duties, first on tobacco and finally on wine, into an excise duty; that is, the tax was no longer to be levied at the ports but at the warehouse. Duties on importation were to be changed into duties on consumption, while the new system would prevent frauds in the revenue, enable Walpole to take off the land tax, and by establishing a system of bonded warehousing for re-exportation, “make London a free port and the market of the world." But the Excise was unpopular, partly because the first Excise had been brought into England during the Commonwealth from our old rivals the Dutch. The opposition cried out that Walpole's plan was but the clearing the way for a "general excise, a monstrous project, a plot to grind the country to powder, and establish a baleful tyranny." Walpole stood out for some weeks, but finally withdrew the measure.

In 1737 the mob of Edinburgh, excited by the execution of a gallant smuggler and the harshness of Porteous, the captain of the city guard, broke open the Tolbooth (the city prison) and solemnly hanged Porteous in The Porteous the Grassmarket. The Government proposed Riots, 1737. to avenge the Porteous Riots by taking away the charter of Edinburgh, but Walpole prudently changed the plan when he found that even the Scotch members, who received a regular salary from him, were up in arms against it. The bill, though cut down "to a measure for making the fortune of an old cook-maid" (Porteous's widow), was only carried by a single vote.

Growth of the

3. Walpole honestly tried to do his best for his country, but "he thought" says Lord Hervey, "that he was to England what a spring was to a Opposition to watch, and that the wheels would stand still if Walpole. he were taken away." His strong love of power gradually disgusted his colleagues, who intrigued actively against him. As he got older, he grew so jealous that he drove away nearly every man of character and ability from his ministry. The brilliant but unsteady Carteret was removed in 1724 from his secretaryship of state, and transferred to the less important office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1725 Pulteney,