about. The
prediction of Horatio Walpole came true.

{172}

[Sidenote: 1739--The secession]

The address was carried by 260 against 232. The ministerial majority
had run down to 28. Next day the battle was renewed. According to
parliamentary usage, the report of the address was brought up, and
Pulteney seized the opportunity to make another vehement attack on the
convention and the ministers. He accused the Prime-minister of meanly
stooping to the dictates of a haughty, insolent Court, and of bartering
away the lives and liberties of Englishmen for "a sneaking, temporary,
disgraceful expedient." But the interest of the day was to come. The
address was agreed to by a majority of 262 against 234. This was
exactly the same majority as before, only with both sides slightly
strengthened. Then the principal leaders of Opposition thought the
time had come for them to intervene with a deliberately planned _coup
de theatre_. Acting, it is understood, under the advice of
Bolingbroke, they had been looking out for an opportunity to secede
from the House of Commons on the ground that it was vain for patriotic
men to try to do their duty to their country in a House of which the
majority, narrow though it was, was yet the absolute slave of such a
minister as Walpole. They hoped that such a step would have two
effects. It would, they believed, create an immense sensation all over
England and make them the heroes of the hour; and they fondly hoped
that it would scare Walpole, and prevent him from passing in their
absence the measures which their presence was unable to prevent. Such,
we have no doubt, were the ideas of Bolingbroke and of Pulteney and of
others; but we do not say that they were the ideas of the man who was
intrusted with the duty of announcing the intentions of his party.
This was Sir William Wyndham; and we do not believe that any hope of
being one of the heroes of the hour entered for a moment into his mind.
He only in a general honest thought, and common good to all, made one
of them. Wyndham rose, and in a speech of great solemnity announced
that he was about to pay his last duty to his country as a member of
that {117} House. What hope, he asked, was there when the eloquence of
one man had so great an effect within the walls of the House of
Commons, and the unanimous voice of a brave, suffering people without
had so little? He implied that the majority of the House must have
been determined "by