who led their people and their armies
in the wars. Unkingly, indeed unheroic, little of kin with them they
might well have thought that panting George; and yet they might have
looked on him with interest as the last of their proud race.

We have been anticipating a little; let us anticipate a little more and
say what came of the war, so far as the claims originally made by
England, or rather by the Patriots, were concerned. When peace was
arranged, nearly ten years after, the _asiento_ was renewed for four
years, and not one word was said in the treaty about Spain renouncing
the right of search. The great clamor of the Patriots had been that
Spain must be made to proclaim publicly her renunciation of the right
of search; and when a treaty of settlement came to be drawn up not a
{184} sentence was inserted about the right of search, and no English
statesman troubled his head about the matter. The words of Burke,
taken out of one of his writings from which a quotation has already
been made, form the most fitting epitaph on the war as it first broke,
out--the war of Jenkins's ear. "Some years after it was my fortune,"
says Burke, "to converse with many of the principal actors against that
minister (Walpole), and with those who principally excited that clamor.
None of them--no, not one--did in the least defend the measure or
attempt to justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they
would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which
they were totally unconcerned." Let it not be forgotten, however,
that, while this is a condemnation of the Patriots, it is no less a
condemnation of Walpole. The policy which none of them could
afterwards defend, which he himself had always condemned and
reprobated, he nevertheless undertook to carry out rather than submit
to be driven from office. Schiller in one of his dramas mourns over
the man who stakes reputation, health, and all upon success--and no
success in the end. It was to be thus with Walpole.

{185}

CHAPTER XXXIII.

"AND WHEN HE FALLS----"

[Sidenote: 1741--Motions against Walpole]

Walpole soon found that his enemies were no less bitter against him, no
less resolute to harass and worry him, now that he had stooped to be
their instrument and do their work. Every unsuccessful movement in the
war was made the occasion of a motion for papers, a motion for an
inquiry, a vote of want of confidence, or some other direct or indirect