accession. George II, to carry out his purpose, would be
obliged to swamp the House of Lords with new peers. To prevent this,
it was proposed to limit the power of creation and to fix a maximum
number. As the Septennial Act had increased the power of the commons,
the Peerage Bill would, in their turn, have increased the power of the
peers, against the crown on one hand, against the commons on the
other. The Whigs were not prepared to diminish the House of Commons,
and not yet afraid that it would become too powerful, exposed as it
was to corruption, and elected, on a narrow franchise, by an
uneducated constituency. Burnet, the typical Whig, had protested
against such limitations as should quite change the form of our
government, and render the crown titular and precarious.

Walpole defeated the Bill. It deprived government of one great means
of influence, by abolishing the hope of a peerage. He was not
prepared to sacrifice a legitimate species of patronage. He came
back, thereupon, to office, but not to a principal office; and he was
not a member of the Cabinet when the South Sea Company undertook to
reduce the National Debt. They offered only eight and a half years'
purchase; but the spirit of speculation was strong, and these bad
terms were widely accepted. The shares of the Company rose from 130
to 1000. As there was so much capital seeking investment, rival
enterprises were started, and were opposed by the South Sea Company.
Their ruin destroyed its credit; and after large sums had been won,
large sums were lost. Some had been impoverished, others enriched.
The country had not suffered, but the ministry fell. Walpole
inherited their power. The ground was cleared for his long
administration. It lasted so long that he did more than any other man
to establish the new system of government. He was more zealous to
retain his power than to make heroic use of it, and was a good
administrator but an indifferent legislator. In his time those things
were best which were done outside of parliament. Walpole made it his
business to yield to public opinion, and did it consistently in the
three critical moments of his career--in Wood's Halfpence, in the
Excise, and in the Spanish war. The same problem presented itself to
a greater man in the present century, and was decided on the opposite
principle. Guizot was himself persuaded that a measure of
parliamentary reform was inevitable, since the opinion of the co