the House of Commons was commanding enough to get his proposals
accepted there. In the House of Lords the Ministry were nowhere in
debate. Something, indeed, should be said for Lord Hervey, who had
been raised to the Upper House as Baron Hervey of Ickworth in 1733, and
who made some speeches full of clear good-sense and sound moderating
argument in support of Walpole's policy. But Carteret and Chesterfield
would have been able in any case to overwhelm the Duke of Newcastle,
and the Duke of Newcastle now was turning traitor to Walpole. Stupid
as Newcastle was, he was beginning to see that the day of Walpole's
destiny was nearly over, and he was taking {161} measures to act
accordingly. All that Newcastle could do as Secretary for Foreign
Affairs was done to make peace impossible.

[Sidenote: 1739--The Convention]

Walpole thought the time had fully come when it would be right for him
to show that, while still striving for peace, he was not unprepared for
war. He sent a squadron of line-of-battle ships to the Mediterranean
and several cruisers to the West Indies, and he allowed letters of
marque to be issued. These demonstrations had the effect of making the
Spanish Government somewhat lower their tone--at least they had the
effect of making that Government seem more willing to come to terms.
Long negotiations as to the amount of claim on the one side and of
set-off on the other were gone into both in London and Madrid. We need
not study the figures, for nothing came of the proposed arrangement.
It was impossible that anything could come of it. England and Spain
were quarrelling over several great international questions. Even
these questions were themselves only symbolical of a still greater one,
of a paramount question which was never put into words: the question
whether England or Spain was to have the ascendent in the new world
across the Atlantic. Walpole and the Spanish Government drew up an
arrangement, or rather professed to find a basis of arrangement, for
the paying off of certain money claims. A convention was agreed upon,
and was signed on January 14, 1739. The convention arranged that a
certain sum of money was to be paid by Spain to England within a given
time, but that this discharge of claims should not extend to any
dispute between the King of Spain and the South Sea Company as holders
of the Asiento Contract; and that two plenipotentiaries from each side
should meet at Madrid to settle the