1740-43. SHADOW OF THE COMING FORTY-FIVE.' 241

PHILIP

We need not trouble ourselves much about the war with Spain. On neither side of the struggle was anything done which calls for grave historical notice. Every little naval success one of our admirals accomplished in the American seas, as they were then called, was glorified as if it had been an anticipated Trafalgar; and our admirals accomplished blunders and failures as well as petty victories. The quarrel very soon became swallowed up in the great war which broke out on the death of Charles the Sixth of Spain, and the occupation of Silesia by Frederick of Prussia. England lent a helping hand in the great war, but its tale does not belong to English history. Two predictions of Walpole's were very quickly realised. France almost immediately took part with Spain, in accordance with the terms of the Family Compact. In 1740 an organisation was got up in Scotland by a number of Jacobite noblemen and other gentlemen pledging themselves to stake fortune and life on the Stuart cause whenever its standard, supported by foreign auxiliaries, should be raised in Great Britain. This was the shadow cast before by the coming events of forty-five'-events which Walpole was not destined to see.

One link of personal interest connects England with the war. George sent a body of British and Hanoverian troops into the field to support Maria Theresa of Hungary. The troops were under the command of Lord Stair, the veteran soldier and diplomatist, whose brilliant career has been already described in this history. George himself joined Lord

VOL. II.

R

Stair and fought at the battle of Dettingen, where the French were completely defeated; one of the few creditable events of the war, so far as English arms were concerned. George behaved with great courage and spirit. If the poor, stupid, puffy, plucky little man did but know what a strange, picturesque, memorable figure he was as he stood up against the enemy at that battle of Dettingen! The last king of England who ever appeared with his army in the battlefield! There, as he gets down off his unruly horse, determined to trust to his own stout legs-because, as he says, they will not run away-there is the last successor of the Williams, and the Edwards, and the Henrys; the last successor of the Conqueror, and Edward the First, and the Black Prince, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry of Agincourt, and William of Nassau ; the last English king who faces a foe in battle. With him went out, in this country, the last tradition of the old and original duty and right of royaltythe duty and the right to march with the national army in war. A king in older days owed his kingship to his capacity for the brave squares of war. In other countries the tradition lingers still. A continental sovereign, even if he have not really the generalship to lead an army, must appear on the field of battle, and at least seem to lead it, and he must take his share of danger with the rest. But in England the very idea has died out, never in all probability to come back to life again. If one were to follow some of the examples set us in classical imaginings, we might fancy the darkening clouds on

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GEORGE AT DETTINGEN.

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the west, where the sun has sunk over the battlefield, to be the phantom-shapes of the great English kings who led their people and their armies in the wars. Unkingly, indeed unheroic, little of kin with them, they might well have thought that panting George; and yet they might have looked on him with interest as the last of their proud race.

We have been anticipating a little; let us anticipate a little more and say what came of the war, so far as the claims originally made by England, or rather by the Patriots, were concerned. When peace was arranged, nearly ten years after, the asiento was renewed for four years, and not one word was said in the treaty about Spain renouncing the Right of Search. The great clamour of the Patriots had been that Spain must be made to proclaim publicly her renunciation of the Right of Search; and when a treaty of settlement came to be drawn up not a sentence was inserted about the Right of Search, and no English statesman troubled his head about the matter. The words of Burke, taken out of one of his writings from which a quotation has already been made, form the most fitting epitaph on the war as it first broke out the war of Jenkins's Ear. Some years after, it was my fortune,' says Burke, 'to converse with many of the principal actors against that minister (Walpole), and with those who principally excited that clamour. None of themno, not one-did in the least defend the measure or attempt to justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they would have done in commenting

upon any proceeding in history in which they were totally unconcerned.' Let it not be forgotten, however, that, while this is a condemnation of the Patriots, it is no less a condemnation of Walpole. The policy which none of them could afterwards defend, which he himself had always condemned and reprobated, he nevertheless undertook to carry out rather than submit to be driven from office. Schiller in one of his dramas mourns over the man who stakes reputation, health, and all upon success -and no success in the end. It was to be thus with Walpole.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

'AND WHEN HE FALLS

WALPOLE Soon found that his enemies were no less bitter against him, no less resolute to harass and worry him, now that he had stooped to be their instrument and to do their work. Every unsuccessful movement in the war was made the occasion of a motion for papers, a motion for an enquiry, a vote of want of confidence, or some other direct or indirect attack upon the prime minister. In the House of Lords, Lord Carteret was especially unsparing, and was brilliantly supported by Lord

Chesterfield. In the House of Commons Samuel Sandy's, a clever and respectable country gentleman from Worcestershire, made himself quite a sort of renown by his motions against Walpole. On Friday, February 13, 1741, a motion was made in each of the Houses of Parliament calling on the King' to remove the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, First Commissioner for executing the office of Treasurer of the Exchequer, Chancellor and under-Treasurer of the Exchequer, and one of his Majesty's most honourable Privy Council, from his Majesty's presence and coun