THE AGE OF WALPOLE, 1714-1742 The First Phase: 1714-21.—The peaceful accession of George I., which to Tories such as Swift and Atterbury seemed a "mir acle," was due to the political incapacity of Bolingbroke, the fine organization of the Whigs who were ready when a divided Tory Party was not, and to the common-sense of the majority of Englishmen who were prepared to let the Elector of Hanover come and have a fair trial, but were not prepared to invite the Roman Catholic son of James II. to start a civil war as the justification of a hereditary, but not a statutory, title to the throne. The Whigs realized that this German-speaking king, ignorant of England and English mentality, would only stay at Windsor if his government were made acceptable. The new king knew that without the Whigs he was a king without a kingdom, and the Whigs knew that with out George I. they had a kingdom without a king. They concen trated on essentials. Time and statesmanship could solve the problem. Meanwhile let the king and court be German, and the government English and for England. There was a double practi cal problem—internal, to keep order and reconcile the nation to a "foreign" sovereign and court (with an awkward appendage in Hanover)—external, to control foreign policy so as to keep England out of war. The ministry of Stanhope (1714-21) was a masterly achievement of both ends. The Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 was a miserable fiasco. France refused to stir ; "James III. and VIII." arrived too late and had no gift of leadership; and at Preston (place of ill-omen for Stuart adventures) the rebellion was quenched. The Riot Act of 1715 is the one permanent sur vival of this mismanaged miscarriage of Jacobite sentiment. The Septennial Act followed (1716), and by a daring assertion of par liamentary supremacy repealed the Triennial Act, postponed a general election, and made such elections necessary only every seven years. It lasted as the law of the land until 1911. In foreign policy Stanhope deserves fame for the Triple Alliance (with Hol land and the France of the regent Orleans), for the crushing of Alberoni's schemes, for the Treaty of Passarowitz which ended the war in the East (1718), for the conversion of the Triple into a Quadruple alliance (1718) by bringing in the Emperor, and for the series of treaties (1721) which ended the war that had raged in the north of Europe since 1698.
Sir Robert Walpole was the last and the greatest of the true Revolution Whigs; he stood for a "system" both in home and for eign policy ; the 20 years, 1721-42, are the history and justifica tion of that system; and his fall was the fall of that system. At home his main object was to complete the reconciliation of Great Britain to the new dynasty, and by wise finance, avoidance of unnecessary controversies—particularly on religion—and by the maintenance of order and prosperity, prove the efficiency of par liamentary government on principles laid down in the Revolu tion settlement of 1689. Walpole was intensely English, and a Whig to the core. By 1742 he had made the House of Commons the real centre of political gravity and the cabinet (q.v.) an effec tive organ for linking executive and legislature together. He grasped that parliamentary government was party government ; he led the Whigs as a party leader; he was the first and one of the greatest of British prime ministers (though he never claimed the title) and one of the three or four memorable finance ministers in two centuries. His foreign policy (directed until 173o by Towns hend) was based on the necessity of peace; he refused to inter vene in the wars which shook Europe; he maintained the alliance with France which he used to solve the complicated problems that from 1721 onwards are only intelligible by detailed study. Alike in 1725, 1729, 1731 and finally in 1738, Great Britain was instru mental in bringing about elaborate treaty settlements which pre vented or ended devastating wars on the Continent.
Walpole's tenure of power was not seriously shaken either by the quarrel with and retirement of Townshend (1730), the acces sion of George II., whose gifted queen, Caroline of Anspach, was Walpole's stoutest ally until her death in 1737, or by the failure to carry his Excise bill in 1733 against the ignorant fanaticism of the country. But in 1739, popular clamour voiced by the elder Pitt, the Whig dissidents and the Tory Party, forced him into war with Spain—"the war of Jenkins's ear." This colonial and com mercial quarrel, which Walpole had really settled satisfactorily by negotiation, became merged in the War of the Austrian Suc cession begun by Frederick the Great in 1740. The war with Spain was mismanaged, for Walpole was no war minister and his cabinet was hopelessly divided: the alliance with France was worn out. The "system" at home and abroad in fact had collapsed. Defeated in the House of Commons, Walpole resigned. His health was broken; he had done his work; he had been the main force in creating a new England and a new age, which he did not under stand and which did not understand him. He left no successor of a like calibre or with the same remarkable combination of gifts. But he had stamped his personality and political principles on two generations.