on foreign battle-fields. He despised war, and the trade of
war, in his heart. To him war showed only in its vulgar, practical,
and repulsive features; the soldier was a man who got paid for the
{167} trade of killing. Walpole might be likened to a shrewd and
sensible steward who is sincerely anxious to manage his master's estate
with order and economy, and who, for that very reason, is willing to
indulge his master's vices and to sanction his prodigalities to a
certain extent, knowing that if he attempts to draw the purse-strings
too closely an open rupture will be the result, and then some steward
will come in who has no taste for saving, and who will let everything
go to rack and ruin. He was the first of the long line of English
ministers who professed to regard economy as one of the great objects
of statesmanship. He established securely the principle that to make
the two ends meet was one of the first duties of patriotism. He
founded, if we may use such an expression, the dynasty of statesmen to
which Pitt and Peel and Gladstone belong. The change in our
constitutional ways which set up that new dynasty was of infinitely
greater importance to England than the change which settled the
Brunswicks in the place of the Stuarts.

{168}

CHAPTER X.

HOME AFFAIRS.

[Sidenote: 1717--Oxford's impeachment]

Meanwhile the public seemed to have forgotten all about Lord Oxford.
"Harley, the nation's great support," as Swift had called him, had been
nearly two years in the Tower, and the nation did not seem to miss its
great support, or to care anything about him. In May, 1717, Lord
Oxford sent a petition to the House of Lords, complaining of the
hardship and injustice of this unaccountable delay in his impeachment,
and the House of Lords began at last to put on an appearance of
activity. The Commons, too, revived and enlarged their secret
committee, of which it will be remembered that Walpole was the
chairman. Times, however, had changed. Walpole was not in the
administration, and felt no anxiety to assist the ministry in any way.
He purposely absented himself from the sittings, and a new chairman had
to be chosen. Probably Walpole had always known well enough that there
was not evidence to sustain a charge of high-treason against his former
rival; perhaps, now that the rival was down in the dust, never to rise
again, he did not care to press for his punishment. At all events, he
made it clear that he