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was accustomed on all difficult questions to defer to the advice of his wife, Queen Caroline-a woman of sound judgment and of wide intellectual interests. George's first impulse was to choose as his leading minister Sir Spencer Compton, a personal favourite of his own. Compton, however, being ordered to write the speech in which the king was to notify his accession to the Privy Council, was so overpowered by the difficulties of the task that he begged Walpole to write it for him. After this the queen easily persuaded her husband that Compton was not strong enough for the post; and Walpole, being recalled to office, was soon as much trusted by George II. as he had been by George I.

21. Breach between Walpole and Townshend. 1730.-Even after the complete establishment of Parliamentary supremacy the favour of the king was not to be despised; for, though he could not shake the power of the Whig aristocracy as a whole, yet if one Whig entered upon a rivalry with another, his support would be decisive, at least for a time. Such a rivalry now broke out between Walpole and his brother-in-law, Townshend, who had been Secretary of State since 1721. The main cause of the quarrel is best described by Walpole himself. "As long," he said, "as the firm was Townshend and Walpole, the utmost harmony prevailed; but it no sooner became Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong." In other words, the question between them was whether there was to be a Prime Minister or not. Townshend, who was Secretary of State, held to the old doctrine that he was accountable only to the king and Parliament. Walpole held to the new doctrine that he himself as first Lord of the Treasurywas to direct the policy of the other ministers. It is not by accident that the First Lord of the Treasury has usually been the Prime Minister; in later years it has been accepted as the general rule. It is his business to find the money expended by the other ministers, and it is therefore only reasonable that decision of a policy which will cost money should rest with him. He should be able to exercise a veto over proposals which lead to an expendi ture which, even if it is desirable in itself, may be greater than the country is able or willing to bear. In 1730 Townshend resigned, and being honourably desirous of keeping out of farther disputes with his brother-in-law, remained in private life to the end of his days.

22. Bolingbroke as Organiser of the Opposition. 1726—1732.— Already a violent opposition was gathering against Walpole. In 1716 the Pretender, being too stupid to take good advice, had dis

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1725

WALPOLE AND BOLINGBROKE

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missed Bolingbroke from his service (see p. 705). Bolingbroke, by
bribing one of the mistresses of George I., had interested that
king in his favour, and in 1725 his attainder had been reversed.
Walpole, however, had still sufficient influence to procure the main-

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Sir Robert Walpole: from the picture by Van Loo in the National Portrait Gallery. tenance of the clause in the Act of Attainder which excluded him from the House of Lords. Bolingbroke, the most eloquent orator of the day, was thus shut out from the only place in which at that

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time it was possible for him to make his cloquence heard. Walpole may well have thought that he had crushed Bolingbroke for ever. He had, however, under-estimated the powers of the Tory leader. Though Bolingbroke could deliver no more orations, he was still master of his pen and of his persuasive tongue, and he set to work to weld together a parliamentary opposition out of the most discordant elements. Those elements were in the main three. There were in the House of Commons about fifty Jacobites, a small number of Tories accepting the House of Hanover, and a gradually-increasing body of Whigs sulky because Walpole did not admit them to a share of power. Of the latter the leader was William Pulteney, an indiscreet politician but an excellent speaker. Between Bolingbroke and Pulteney an alliance was struck, and by the end of 1726 they had combined in publishing The Craftsman, a weekly paper in which Walpole was held up to obloquy as erecting a ministerial despotism by the use of corruption.

23. The Excise Bill. 1733.—In 1733 Walpole gave a handle to the attacks of his enemies. There was an immense amount of smuggling and of other frauds on the customs revenue. To meet the difficulty Walpole proposed to establish a new system of levying the duties on tobacco, intending, as he gave out, to extend it subsequently to those on wine. According to this new system all tobacco imported was to be brought free of duty into warehouses under Government supervision. The duty would be paid by those who took it out for home consumption, and its sale would only be allowed at shops licensed for the purpose, in the same way that certain houses are licensed for the sale of beer at the present day. As the tax was really paid on an imported article, it would have been more prudent in Walpole if he had continued to call it a customs duty, as an excise was an unpopular form of taxation. He called it, however, an excise, probably because the sale of the tobacco was confined to licensed houses, as the sale of any other excisable article would be. He had, indeed, reason to hope that his plan would prove acceptable. In the first place if it were adopted smuggling would be far more difficult than it had hitherto been, because it would now be more easy to detect the sale of the smuggled article ; and in the second place not only would the public revenue be benefited, but the honest trader would be less liable to be undersold by the smuggler. A third advantage would also be gained. Hitherto goods imported in order to be subsequently exported had had to pay duty, which was only recoverable upon the

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Vessels unloading at the Customs House, at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

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