in the long series of his inimitable letters. Memoirs of Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries, edited by Eliot Warburton, were published in 1851.—F. E.
WALPOLE, Sir Robert, Earl of Orford, a celebrated statesman, was born in 1676, of an ancient family in Norfolk. He was educated at Eton, where he was the contemporary of St. John (Lord Bolingbroke), and at King's college, Cambridge. He was intended for the church, and used to say of himself that had he taken orders he should have been archbishop of Canterbury, instead of prime minister. But by the decease of his two elder brothers he became heir to the family estate, with a double advantage, says Earl Stanhope—the inheritance of an elder and the application of a younger son. On the death of his father in 1700 he was elected member for the family borough of Castle Rising, which he continued to represent in the last two short parliaments summoned by King William. On his entrance into public life he immediately attached himself to the whig party, and was cordially welcomed as an important accession to their ranks. His first speech was regarded as a failure, but his perseverance soon overcame every difficulty, and he became, not indeed a great orator, but one of the best debaters the house of commons has produced. In 1702 he was returned to parliament for King's Lynn, and represented that borough in several succeeding parliaments. In 1705 he was nominated one of the council of the lord high admiral; in 1708 he was appointed secretary at war; and in the following year was also made treasurer of the navy. In 1710 he was one of the managers of Sacheverell's impeachment; and when that ill-advised step led to the overthrow of the government he resigned his office, which he was invited by Harley to retain, and retired along with his friends. A few months later he was expelled from the house by the triumphant tory party, and committed to the Tower on a charge of corruption relating to some forage contracts; but he was considered a martyr to his party, and when he regained his freedom at the close of the session in July, 1712, he found his reputation greatly raised by his imprisonment. In 1714 he was re-elected for the borough of Lynn. His defence of Steele, when that wit was expelled from parliament by the vindictive "tories and Jacobites for publishing the well-known "Crisis," was very much to his credit.
On the death of Queen Anne, and the ignominious downfall of her traitorous ministry, Walpole was at once received into favour at court along with his party. In a few days after the arrival of George I. he was appointed a privy councillor and paymaster of the forces. He was chairman of the committee of secrecy which was chosen to inquire into the conduct of the late ministry, and supported with great zeal the impeachment of Oxford and Bolingbroke. He was rewarded for his services by his promotion to the office of first commissioner of the treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer, in October, 1715. But becoming dissatisfied with the superior influence of Sunderland and Stanhope in the cabinet, misunderstandings arose between him and his colleagues, and he resigned his office in April, 1717. His behaviour while in opposition was by no means creditable to him; he unscrupulously leagued himself with the inveterate enemies of the Hanoverian dynasty, and factiously thwarted the whole policy of the government, including the very measures he had previously recommended. His eloquent denunciations of the peerage bill (1719) contributed largely to its rejection by the commons, but only a few months afterwards he consented to accept a subordinate office in the ministry, and became paymaster of the forces. He conducted himself with great prudence in the midst of the excitement caused by the South Sea scheme. His calm good sense, says Macaulay, preserved him from the general infatuation. He condemned the prevailing madness in public, and turned a considerable sum by taking advantage of it in private. When the crash at length came the task of framing a scheme for meeting the public difficulties was by universal assent assigned to Walpole, and he was shortly after appointed chancellor of the exchequer, and also succeeded Sunderland as the first minister of the crown. The death in rapid succession of his rivals, Stanhope, Craggs, and Sunderland, left Walpole's ascendancy in the government undisputed, The schism in the whig party was now completely healed, and an overwhelming majority of the representatives of the people gave their support to the administration. The public business was carried on for a time with a smoothness and a despatch such as had not been witnessed for more than a century. Walpole's love of power involved him in a succession of desperate contests with the ablest of his colleagues, but he triumphed over them all, and maintained a complete ascendancy in the government until the death of George I., and received numerous and striking proofs of the royal favour. It was believed that the new king disliked his father's ministers, and when the intelligence of his accession to the throne was made known to him he appointed Sir Spencer Compton, the speaker, to draw up the necessary declaration to the privy council, thus pointing him out as the future head of the government. But Sir Spencer's incapacity for this high office became so apparent at the very outset that he was obliged to relinquish his commission, and the claims of Walpole were so dexterously stated by Queen Caroline that the king was induced to reappoint the old ministers, and Walpole's influence over the new monarch became as great as it had been with his predecessor. He made use of his uncontrolled ascendancy to introduce various measures of reform, especially in the proceedings of the courts of justice, and in the frightful abuses which existed at that time in the public prisons. In 1733 he brought forward two of his most celebrated financial measures. The first was his proposal to take half a million from the sinking fund for the service of the current year, which, though a most unjustifiable proceeding, was carried by a large majority. The other was his famous excise scheme, the purpose of which was to convert the customs on tobacco and wine into excise duties, to institute what is now called the bonding system, and to remove some of the worst and most oppressive abuses of the excise laws. But the most violent opposition was excited against his scheme both in parliament and in the country, and the most unfair and discreditable expedients were adopted to defeat it. The popular clamour grew louder and louder, while the majority in its favour in the house gradually dwindled from sixty to sixteen, and at length Walpole found it expedient to drop the measure. But he revenged himself for his defeat by dismissing the earls of Chesterfield, Burlington, Marchmont, and Stair, and by depriving of their commissions in the army several other influential peers who had shown their dislike to the obnoxious bill. This step cannot be vindicated either on the ground of justice or expediency, and had the effect of reinforcing the ranks of the opposition. In 1737 the death of the queen, who recommended the king to him almost with her latest breath, deprived Walpole of one of his most powerful supporters, and soon after he was seriously embarrassed by the quarrels which broke out between the Spanish court and the British merchants, who carried on an illicit trade with South America which the Spaniards strove in vain to repress. Mutual complaints of illegality, injustice, and severity were in consequence made from time to time. The dissatisfaction which prevailed at home was violently inflamed by the opposition; a convention which was arranged by the prudence and moderation of Walpole failed to settle the matter in dispute, and at length the tide of feeling ran so high in England that the minister was reduced to the necessity of choosing between an unjust war and the loss of power. He preferred the former; and while seeing clearly the wickedness of the proceeding, and the mischief and misery which it was certain to produce, he yielded to the popular clamour and declared war against Spain (19th October, 1739). On the day of the declaration, when the steeples of London were ringing forth joyful peals, he was heard to mutter, "They may ring the bells now, before long they will be wringing their hands." This false step, however, on the part of Walpole failed to strengthen his administration. Fresh discontents broke out in the country, his unpopularity increased, while his influence in parliament steadily diminished; dissensions broke out in the cabinet, and everything portended a speedy termination to his long-continued sway. His love of power had alienated all the ablest men of his party; Pulteney, Carteret, Townshend, Chesterfield, and others, had one by one been converted from colleagues into inveterate enemies; till at length he had arrayed against his government "the majority of the landed gentry, the majority of the parochial clergy, one of the universities, a strong party in the city of London and in other great towns," together with all the tories and Jacobites, a large body of discontented whigs with the prince of Wales at their head, the young patriots—"the boys," as he contemptuously termed them—and the men of letters, who were either inflamed by party zeal, or exasperated by the neglect with which the minister had systematically treated them. The elections of 1741 were unfavourable to the government, but the veteran statesman continued almost single-handed to maintain
