cted by the fact that the marriage had not yet actually been
concluded, only a brain like that of the Duke of Newcastle could
settle. Of course the Bill was passed; each noble lord who criticised
it was louder than the other in declaring that he had not the slightest
notion of opposing it. "I am so fond," said the Earl of Winchelsea,
"of enabling his Majesty to provide a sufficient marriage-portion for
the Princess Royal that I will not oppose this Bill." There was much
excuse for being fond of providing his Majesty in this instance, seeing
that the money was not to be found by the tax-payers. Probably the
true reason why the grant was asked in a manner which would not be {45}
thought endurable in our days, was that the Government well knew the
King himself cared as little about the marriage as the people did, and
were of opinion that the more the grant was huddled up the better.

[Sidenote: 1736--A projected double alliance]

We get one or two notes about this time that seem to have a forecast of
later days in them. An explosion of some kind takes place in
Westminster Hall while all the courts of justice were sitting. No
great harm seems to have been done, but the event naturally startled
people, and was instantly regarded as evidence of a Jacobite plot to
assassinate somebody; it was not very clear who was the particular
object of hatred. Walpole wrote to his brother, telling him of the
explosion, and adding, "There is no reason to doubt that the whole
thing was projected and executed by a set of low Jacobites who talked
of setting fire to the gallery built for the marriage of the Princess
Royal" by means of "a preparation which they call phosphorus, that
takes fire by the air." About the same time, too, we hear of an
outbreak of anti-Irish riots in Shoreditch and other parts of the east
end of London. The "cry and complaint" of the anti-Irish was, as
Walpole described the matter, that they were underworked and starved by
Irishmen. Numbers of Irishmen, it would seem, were beginning to come
over to this country, not merely to labor in harvesting in the rural
districts, as they had long been accustomed to do, but undertaking work
of all kinds at lower wages than English workmen were accustomed to
receive. "The cry is, Down with the Irish," Walpole says; and Dr.
Sheridan, Swift's correspondent, proclaiming in terms of humorous
exaggeration his desire to get out of Cavan, protests that, failing all
other means