Walpole hoped that the
House of Hanover was now secure on the throne, and believed, with too
sanguine a confidence, that no other effort would be made to disturb
it. Moreover, he saw some reason to think that France, no longer
guided by the political intelligence of a man like the Duke of Orleans,
was drawing a little too close in her relationship with Spain. Walpole
was already looking forward to the coming of a time when it might be
necessary for England to strengthen herself against France and Spain,
and he therefore desired to get into a good understanding with the
Emperor and Austria.

Walpole now had the Government entirely to himself. He was not merely
all-powerful in the administration, he actually was the administration.
The King knew him to be indispensable; the Queen put the fullest trust
in him. His only trouble was with the intrigues of Bolingbroke and the
opposition of Pulteney. The latter sometimes affected what would have
been called at the time a "mighty unconcern" about political affairs.
Writing once to Pope, he says, "Mrs. Pulteney is now in labor; if she
does well, and brings me a boy, I shall not care one sixpence how much
longer Sir Robert governs England, or Horace governs France." This was
written while Horace Walpole was still Ambassador at the French Court.
Pulteney, however, was very far from feeling anything like the
philosophical indifference which he expressed in his letter to Pope.
He never ceased to attack everything done by the Ministry, and to
satirize every word said by Walpole. At the same time Pulteney was
complaining bitterly to his friends of the attacks made on him by the
supporters of Walpole. On February 9, 1730, he wrote a letter to
Swift, in which he says that "certain people" had been driven by want
of argument "to that last resort of calling names: villain, traitor,
seditious rascal, and such ingenious appellations have frequently been
bestowed on a couple of friends of yours." "Such usage," he
complacently adds, "has made it {306} necessary to return the same
polite language; and there has been more Billingsgate stuff uttered
from the press within these two months than ever was known before."
Swift himself had previously written to his friend Dr. Sheridan a
letter in which he declared that "Walpole is peevish and disconcerted,
stoops to the vilest offices of hireling scoundrels to write
Billingsgate of the lowest and most prostitute kind, and has none but
beasts