ughter of the Duke of Marlborough, was
at the head of the cabal party, and was much endeared to the Whigs by
his steady attachment to their principles. He had expected, and
probably deserved, to be placed at the head of the administration.
When disappointed, he bent all his energies to undermine Townsend and
Walpole, and succeeded for a while. But Walpole's opposition to the
new administration was so powerful, that it did not last long.
Sunderland had persuaded the king to renounce his constitutional
prerogative of creating peers; and a bill, called the _Peerage Bill_,
was proposed, which limited the House of Lords to its actual existing
number, the tendency of which was to increase the power and rank of
the existing peers, and to raise an eternal bar to the aspirations of
all commoners to the peerage, and thus widen the gulf between the
aristocracy and the people. Walpole presented these consequences so
forcibly, and showed so clearly that the proposed bill would diminish
the consequence of the landed gentry, and prove a grave to honorable
merit, that the Commons were alarmed, and rejected the bill by a large
and triumphant majority of two hundred and sixty-nine to one hundred
and seventy-seven.

The defeat of this bill, and the great financial embarrassments of the
country, led to the restoration of Walpole to office. His genius was
eminently financial, and his talents were precisely those which have
ever since been required of a minister--those which characterized Sir
Robert Peel and William Pitt. The great problem of any government is,
how to raise money for its great necessities; and the more complicated
the relations of society are, the more difficult becomes the problem.

[Sidenote: The South Sea Bubble.]

At that period, the English nation were intoxicated and led astray by
one of those great commercial delusions which so often take place in
all civilized countries. No mania ever was more marked, more
universal, and more fatal than that of the South Sea Company. The
bubble had turned the heads of politicians, merchants, and farmers;
all classes, who had money to invest, took stock in the South Sea
Company. The delusion, however, passed away; England was left on the
brink of bankruptcy, and a master financier was demanded by the
nation, to extricate it from the effects of folly and madness. All
eyes looked to Sir Robert Walpole, and he did all that financial skill
could do, to repair the evils which speculatio