not merely did he
love it, but he indulged in and encouraged it for practical purposes of
his own; he thought it useful at men's dinner-parties, because it gave
even the dullest man a subject on which he could find something to say.
One could not call Walpole a patriot in the higher sense; he wanted
altogether that fine fibre in his nature, that exalted, half-poetic
feeling, that faculty of imagination which quickens practical and
prosaic objects with the spirit of the ideal, and which are {166}
needed to make a man a patriot in the noblest meaning of the word. But
he loved his country in his own heavy, practical, matter-of-fact sort
of way, and that was just the sort of way which at the time happened to
be most useful to England. Let it be said, too, in justice to Walpole,
that the most poetic and lyrical nature would have found little subject
for enthusiasm in the England of Walpole's earlier political career.
It was not exactly the age for a Philip Sidney or for a Milton.
England's home and foreign policy had for years been singularly
ignoble. At home it had been a conflict of mean intrigues; abroad, a
policy of selfish alliances and base compromises and surrenders. The
splendid military genius of Marlborough only shone as it did as if to
throw into more cruel light the infamy of the intrigues and plots to
which it was often sacrificed. No man could be enthusiastic about
Queen Anne or George the First. The statesmen who professed the utmost
ardor for the Stuart cause were ready to sell it at a moment's notice,
to secure their own personal position; most of those who grovelled
before King George were known to have been in treaty, up to the last,
with his rival. [Sidenote: 1717--Economist statesmen] We may excuse
Walpole if, under such conditions, he took a prosaic view of the state
of things, and made his patriotism a very practical sort of service to
his country. It was, as we have said, precisely the sort of service
England just then stood most in need of. Walpole applied himself to
secure for his country peace and retrenchment. He did not, indeed,
maintain a sacred principle of peace; he had no sacred principle about
anything. We shall see more lately that he did not scruple, for party
reasons, to lend himself to a wanton and useless war, well knowing it
was wanton and useless; but his general policy was one of peace, and so
long as he had his own way there would have been no waste of England's
resources