rst Georges were heavy and foreign and
meagre-souled; but at least they were Protestant, and, until the reign
of George III, they were amenable to management. In the result, an
opposition in the classic sense was hardly needed; for the only question
to be considered was the personalities who were to share in power. The
dominating temper of Walpole decided that issue; and he gave thereby to
the political struggle the outlines in which it was encased for a
generation.

It is a dull period, but complacent; for it was not an unprosperous
time. Agriculture and commerce both were abundant; and the increasing
development of towns shows us that the Industrial Revolution loomed in
the near distance. The eager continuance of the deistic controversy
suggests that there was something of novelty beneath the calm; for
Tindal and Woolston and Chubb struck at the root of religious belief,
and Shaftesbury's exaltation of Hellenism not only contributed to the
_Aufklarung_ in Scotland, but suggested that Christian ideals were not
to go unchallenged. But the literature of the time is summarized in
Pope; and the easy neatness of his verses is quaintly representative of
the Georgian peace. Defoe and Swift had both done their work; and the
latter had withdrawn to Ireland to die like a rat in a hole. Bishop
Berkeley, indeed, was convinced of the decadence of England; but his
_Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721) shows rather
the effect of the speculative mania which culminated in the South Sea
Bubble upon a noble moral nature than a genius for political thought.
Certainly no one in that generation was likely to regard with
seriousness proposals for the endowment of motherhood and a tax upon the
estate of bachelors. The cynical sophistries of Mandeville were, despite
the indignation they aroused, more suited to the age that Walpole
governed. It is, in fact, the character of the minister which sets the
keynote of the time. An able speaker, without being a great orator, a
superb administrator, eager rather for power than for good, rating men
low by instinct and corrupting them by intelligence, Walpole was not the
man, either in type of mind or of temperament, to bring great questions
to the foreground of debate. He was content to maintain his hold over
the respect of the Crown, and to punish able rivals by exclusion from
office. One by one, the younger men of talent, Carteret, Pulteney,
Chesterfield, Pitt, were driven into h