Walpole's side mildly pleaded that they had only to fall back
on the cold and commonplace rules of ordinary economy, and try to find
out what sum the nation could really afford to hand over.

The men who talked these revolting absurdities were saying among
themselves an hour after that the prince was an avaricious and greedy
beast, and were openly proclaiming their pious wish that Providence would
be graciously inclined to rid the world of him. Nothing strikes one as
more painful and odious in the ways of that Court and that Parliament
than the language of sickening sycophancy which is used by all statesmen
alike in public {86} with regard to kings and princes, for whom in
private they could find no words of abuse too strong and coarse, no curse
too profane. Never was an Oriental despot the most vain and cruel
addressed in language of more nauseous flattery by great ministers and
officers of State than were the early English sovereigns of the House of
Hanover. The filthy indecency which came so habitually from the lips of
Walpole, of other statesmen, of the King--sometimes even of the Queen
herself--hardly seems more ignoble, more demoralizing, than the
outpouring of a flattery as false as it was gross, a flattery that ought
to have sickened alike the man who poured it out and the man whom it was
poured over. Poor, stupid George seems to have been always taken in by
it. Indeed, in his dull, heavy mind there was no praise the voice of man
could utter which could quite come up to his perfections. The
quicker-witted Queen sometimes writhed under it.

[Sidenote: 1737--Comparisons]

Walpole, however, did not depend upon argument to carry his point. The
stone up his sleeve, to use a somewhat homely expression, which he meant
to fling at his enemy, was something quite different from any question of
Constitution or prescription or precedent; of the genius of the Black
Prince, and the manner in which Wild Hal, Falstaff's companion, had been
endowed and allowanced into Henry, the victor of Agincourt. Walpole
flung down, metaphorically speaking, on the table of the House the record
of the interview between the Prince of Wales and the great peers who
waited on him, bearing the message of the King. The record set forth all
that had happened: how the King had declared himself willing to provide
at once a suitable jointure for the Princess of Wales; how he had shown
that this had been under consideration, and explained in th