nce between Walpole
and Townshend which was made necessary by those visits gives us many an
interesting glimpse into political affairs in their reality, in their
undress, in their secret movement, which no ordinary State papers or
diplomatic despatches could be trusted to give. The Secretary of State
often communicates to the representative of his country at some foreign
court only just that view of a political situation which he wishes to
put under the eyes of the foreign sovereign and foreign statesmen. But
Walpole writes to Townshend exactly what he himself believes, and what
it is important both to Townshend and to him that Townshend shall fully
know. "I think," Walpole says to Townshend, in one of his letters, "we
have once more got Ireland and Scotland quiet, if we take care to keep
them so." Exactly; if only care be taken to keep them so. The same
chance had often been given to English statesmen before; Ireland and
Scotland quiet, and might have continued in quietness if care had only
been taken to keep them so.

The King was much pleased with Walpole's success. He made him one of
the thirty-eight Knights of the Bath. The Order of the Bath had gone
out of use, out of existence in fact, since the coronation of Charles
the Second; George the First revived it in 1725, and bestowed its
honors on Walpole. It seems an odd sort of reward for the shrewd,
practical, and somewhat coarse-fibred squire-statesman. The close
connection between man and the child, civilized man and the savage, is
never more clearly illustrated than in the joy and pride which the
wisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or a star. In the
next year the King made Walpole a Knight of the Garter; after this
honor all other mark of dignity {253} would be but an anti-climax.
From the time of his introduction to the Order of the Bath, the great
minister ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir Robert Walpole.

Meanwhile, under Walpole's Order of the Bath, many a throb of pain must
have made itself felt. The minister began to find himself harassed by
the most formidable opposition that had ever set itself against him.
Lord Carteret was out of the way for the moment--and only for the
moment; but Pulteney proved a much more pertinacious, ingenious, and
dangerous enemy than Carteret had hitherto been. Pulteney was at one
time the faithful follower, the enthusiastic admirer, almost the
devotee, of Walpole. The one great political