1734.

BOLINGBROKE BORNE DOWN.

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of the situation; Pulteney was not unnaturally inclined to believe that he had a much better understanding of the existing political conditions; he complained that Wyndham submitted too much to Bolingbroke's dictation. The whole alliance was founded on unstable and unwholesome principles; it was sure to crumble and collapse sooner or later. There can be no question but that Walpole's invective precipitated the collapse. With consummate political art he had drawn his picture of Bolingbroke in such form as to make it especially odious just then to Englishmen. The mere supposition that an English statesman has packed cards with a foreign enemy is almost enough in itself at any time to destroy a great career; to turn a popular favourite into an object of national distrust or even national detestation. But in Bolingbroke's case it was no mere supposition. No one could doubt that he had often traded on the political interests of his own country. In truth there was but little of the Englishman about him. His gifts and his vices were alike of a foreign stamp. Walpole was, for good or ill, a genuine sturdy Englishman. His words, his actions, his policy, his schemes, his faults, his vices, were thorough English. It was as an Englishman, as an English citizen, more than as a statesman or an orator, that he bore down Bolingbroke in this memorable debate.

Bolingbroke must have felt himself borne down. He did not long carry on the struggle into which he had plunged with so much alacrity and energy, energy, with

such malice and such hope. Pulteney advised him to go back for a while to France, and in the early part of 1735 he took the advice and went. 'My part. is over,' he wrote to Wyndham in words which have a certain pathetic dignity in them; and he who remains on the stage after his part is over deserves to be hissed off.' His departure, it might almost be called his second flight, to the continent was probably hastened also by the knowledge that a pamphlet was about to be published by some of his enemies, containing a series of letters which had passed between him and James Stuart's secretary after Bolingbroke's dismissal from the service of James in 1716. The pamphlet was suppressed immediately on its appearance, but its contents have been republished, and they were certainly not of a character to render Bolingbroke any the less unpopular among Englishmen.

The correspondence consisted in a series of letters. that passed between Bolingbroke, through his secretary, and Mr. James Murray, acting on behalf of James Stuart, from whom he afterwards received the title of Earl of Dunbar. The letters are little more than mere recriminations. Bolingbroke is accused of having brought about the failure of the insurrection of 1715 by weakness, folly, and even downright treachery. Bolingbroke flings back the charges at the head of James's friends, and even of James him-self. There was nothing brought out in 1734 and 1735 to affect the career and conduct of Bolingbroke which all England did not know pretty well already.

1734.

DISSOLUTION.

25

Still, the revival of these old stories must have seemed to Bolingbroke very inconvenient and dangerous at such a time. The correspondence reminded England once more that Bolingbroke had been the agent of the exiled Stuarts in the work of stirring up a civil war for the overthrow of the House of Hanover. No doubt the publication quickened Bolingbroke's desire to get out of England. But he would have gone in any case; he would have had to go. The whole cabal with Pulteney had been a failure; Bolingbroke would thenceforward be a hindrance rather than a help to the 'Patriots.' His counsel was of no further avail, and he only brought odium on them; indeed, his advice had from first to last been misleading and ill-omened. The Patriots were now only anxious to get rid of him; Pulteney gave Bolingbroke pretty clearly to understand that they wanted him to go, and he went.

Walpole's speech could not but have a powerful effect on the general elections. Parliament was dissolved on April 16, 1734, after having nearly run the full course of seven years. Seldom has a general election been contested with such a prodigality of partisan fury and public corruption. The graver of Hogarth is said to have been employed then for the first time in political satire. Walpole scattered his purchase-money everywhere; he sowed with the sack and not with the hand, to adopt the famous saying applied to a Greek poetess by Pindar. In supporting two candidates for Norfolk, who were both beaten, despite his support, he spent out of his

private fortune at least 10,000l. One contemporary says 60,000l. But the opposition spent just as freely, more freely perhaps. It must be remembered that even so pure-minded a man as Burke has contended that the charge of systematic corruption' was less applicable perhaps to Walpole 'than to any other minister who ever served the Crown for such a length of time.' The opposition were decidedly more reckless in their incitements to violence than the friends of the ministry. The Craftsman boasted that when Walpole came to give his vote as an honorary freeman at Norwich the people called aloud to have the bribery oath administered to him; called on him to swear that he had received no money for his vote. All the efforts of the Patriots, or the representatives of the country interest, as they now preferred to call themselves, failed to bring about the end they aimed at. They did, indeed, increase their Parliamentary vote a little, but the increase was not enough to make any material difference in their position. All the wit, the eloquence, the craft, the courage, the unscrupulous use of every weapon of political warfare that could be seized and handled, had been thrown away. Walpole was, for the time, just as strong as ever.

We turn aside from the movement and rush of politics to lay a memorial spray on the grave of a good and a gifted man. Dr. Arbuthnot died in February, 1735, only sixty years old. 'Poor Arbuthnot,' Pulteney writes to Swift, who grieved to see the wickedness of mankind, and was particularly

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esteemed of his own countrymen, is dead. He lived the last six months in a bad state of health, and hoping every night would be his last; not that he endured any bodily pain, but as he was quite weary of the world, and tired with so much bad company.' Alderman Barber, in a letter to Swift a few days after, says much the same. He is afraid, he tells Swift, that Arbuthnot did not take as much care of himself as he ought to have done. Possibly he might think the play not worth the candle. You may remember Dr. Garth said he was glad when he was dying; for he was weary of having his shoes pulled off and on.' A letter from Arbuthnot himself to Swift, written a short time before his death, is not, however, filled with mere discontent, does not breathe only a morbid weariness of life, but rather testifies to a serene and noble resignation. 'I am going,' he tells Swift, out of this troublesome world, and you, amongst the rest of my friends, shall have my last prayers and good wishes. I am afraid, my dear friend, we shall never see one another more in this world. I shall to the last moment preserve my love and esteem for you, being well assured you will never leave the paths of virtue and honour for all that is in the world. This world is not worth the least deviation from that way.' Thus the great physician, scientific scholar, and humorist awaited his death and died. We have spoken already in this history of Arbuthnot's marvellous humour and satire. Macaulay, in his essay on 'The Life and Writings of Addison,' says 'there