hat she meant well, and can tell by whom she was poisoned. Tom has
always some new promise that we shall see in another month the rightful
monarch on the throne. "Jack Sneaker," on the other hand, is a devoted
adherent to the present establishment. He has known those who saw the
bed in which the Pretender was conveyed in a warming-pan. He often
rejoices that this nation was not enslaved by the Irish. He believes
that King William never lost a battle, and that if he had lived one year
longer he would have conquered France. Yet amid all this satisfaction he
is hourly disturbed by dread of Popery; wonders that stricter laws are
not made against the Papists, and is sometimes afraid that they are busy
with French gold among our bishops and judges.

{224}

CHAPTER XIV.

WALPOLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE.

[Sidenote: 1723--Walpole's Administration]

Walpole was now Prime-minister. The King wished to reward him for his
services by conferring a peerage on him, but this honor Walpole
steadily declined. One of his biographers says that his refusal "at
first appears extraordinary." It ought not to appear extraordinary at
first or at last. Walpole knew that the sceptre of government in
England had passed to the House of Commons. He would have been unwise
and inconsistent indeed if at his time of life he had consented to
renounce the influence and the power which a seat in that House gave
him for the comparative insignificance and obscurity of a seat in the
House of Lords. He accepted a title for his eldest son, who was made
Baron Walpole, but for himself he preferred to keep to the field in
which he had won his name, and where he could make his influence and
power felt all over the land.

We may anticipate the course of events, and say at once that hardly
ever before in the history of English political life, and hardly ever
since Walpole's time, has a minister had so long a run of power. His
long administration, as Mr. Green well says, is almost without a
history. It is almost without a history, that is to say, in the
ordinary sense of the word. For the most part, the steady movement of
England's progress remains, during long years and years, undisturbed by
any event of great dramatic interest at home or abroad. But the period
of Walpole's long and successful administration was none the less a
period of the highest importance in English {225} history. It was a
time of almost uninterrupted national deve