ote, he was
willing to pay the price, and he cared not who knew of the arrangement.
We have already mentioned that the saying ascribed to him about every
man having his price was never uttered by him. What he said probably
was, that "each of these men," alluding to a certain group or party,
had his price. He is reported to have said that he never knew any
woman who would not take money, except one noble lady, whom he named,
and she, he said, took diamonds. He acted consistently and was not
ashamed. He was incorrupt himself; he was even in that sense
incorruptible; but in order to gain his own public purposes, wise and
just as they were, he was willing to corrupt a whole House of Commons,
and would not have shrunk from corrupting a nation.

[Sidenote: 1723--Lord Carteret]

It ought to be pointed out that the very pacific nature of Walpole's
policy and the security and steadiness of his administration made it
sometimes all the more necessary for him to have recourse to
questionable methods. Great controversies of imperial or national
interest--controversies which stir the hearts of men, which appeal to
their principles and awaken their passions--did not often arise during
his long tenure of power. Agitations of this kind, whatever trouble
and disturbance they may bring with them, have a purifying effect upon
the political atmosphere. Only a very ignoble creature is to be bribed
out of his opinions when some interest is at stake, on which his heart,
his training, and his associations have already taught him to take
sides. Walpole kept the nation out of such controversies for the most
part, and one result was that small political combinations of various
kinds were free to form themselves around him, beneath him, and against
him. The House of Commons sometimes threatened to dissolve itself into
a number of little separate sections or factions, none of them
representing any real principle or having more than a temporary
attraction of cohesion. Walpole was again and again placed in the
position of having to encounter {233} some little faction of this kind
by open exercise of power or by the process of corruption, and he
usually found the latter course more convenient and ready. Nor could
such a man at any period of English history have remained long without
more or less formidable rivals. Walpole himself must have known well
enough that the death of men like Sunderland, or the death or any
number of men, could no