Philip,
however, not perhaps without some reason, always regarded the
engagement as precise, and treated the continued retention as an act
of bad faith. In all that I have just said about Gibraltar, I have
been quoting a recent writer in the Historical Review.

The South American trade presented infinite possibilities. It was
pursued with difficulty against the resistance of the Spaniards, who
had the law on their side. It was considered worth a war, and the
strength of public feeling overcame the feeble scruples of the
minister. The war ended disastrously, but before the end Walpole had
been driven from office. It had been no part of his policy to promote
prosperity by arms, but it was part of his policy, and the deciding
part of it, to let the nation, in the last instance, regulate its own
affairs. Peace was a good thing; but profit was also a good thing;
and Walpole had no principle that made one a question of duty and the
other a question of interest.

The constant lesson of the Revolution was that England preferred
monarchy. But after the fall of Walpole it was observed that there was
a new growth of republican sentiment, and that the country felt itself
superior to the government. This was the natural result of the time
known as the Robinocracy; not because he devised liberal measures, but
because he was careful to be neither wiser nor more liberal than the
public. He was quite content to preserve the government of the country
by the rich, in the interest of their own class. Unlike Stanhope, his
predecessor, he was unmoved by the intolerance of the laws in England,
and especially in Ireland. He was a friend to Free Trade; but he
suffered Ireland to be elaborately impoverished, for the benefit of
English landlords. Slavery and the slave trade, which Bolingbroke had
promoted, were not remedied or checked by this powerful Whig. The
criminal Code, in his time, grew annually more severe; and I need
enter into no details as to the treatment of the prisoners and of the
poor. Walpole was so powerful, and was powerful so long, that much of
the responsibility for all these things is at his door. On this
account, and not because he governed by patronage and pensions and
ribbons and bribes, he was a false Whig.

Government by Party was established in 1714, by Party acting through
the Cabinet. Walpole added to this the prime minister, the accepted
head of the Party and of the Cabinet. As the king did not p