It is not out
of place to mention here that when a Bill was unsuccessfully brought in
nearly twenty years after for the Repeal of the Septennial Act, many of
those who had voted in favor of parliaments of seven years in 1716 voted
the other way, while opponents in 1716 were turned into allies in 1734.

[Sidenote: 1716--Death of Lord Somers]

The system of short parliaments has ardent admirers in our own day.
"Annual Parliaments" formed one of the points of the People's Charter.
Many who would not accept the Chartist idea of annual parliaments would
still regard as one of the articles of the true creed of Liberalism the
principle of the triennial parliament. But even if that creed were true
in the politics of the present day, it would not have been true in the
early days of King George. One of the great constitutional changes which
the times were then making, and which Walpole welcomed and helped to
carry out, was the change which gave to the House of Commons the real
ruling power in the Constitution. No representative chamber could then
have held its own against the House of Lords, or the Court, or the Court
and the House of Lords combined, if it had been subject to the necessity
of frequent re-elections. Short parliaments have even in our own days
been made {147} in Europe the most effective weapons of despotic power.
No test more trying can be found for a party of men sincerely anxious to
maintain constitutional rights at a season of danger than to subject them
to frequent and close electoral struggles. Much more important in the
historical and constitutional sense was it at the opening of King
George's reign that the House of Commons should be strengthened than that
any particular party should have unlimited opportunities of trying its
chances at a general election. It mattered little, when once the
position of the representative body had been made secure, whether George
or James sat on the throne. With the representative body an
inconsiderable factor in the State system, Brunswick would soon have been
as unconstitutional as Stuart.

One of the last acts of the life of Lord Somers was to express to Lord
Townshend his approval of the principle of the Septennial Bill. He did
not live to see it actually passed into law. He was but sixty-six years
old at the time of his death. Disease and not age had weakened his fine
intellect, and had kept him for many years from playing any important
part in the affairs o