pe remained supreme; and their first
aim was to secure the maintenance of the Whig power by a constitutional
change. Firm as was the hold of the Whigs over the Commons, it might be
shaken by a revulsion of popular feeling, it might be ruined, as it was
destined to be ruined afterwards, by a change in the temper of the king.
Sunderland sought a permanence of public policy which neither popular
nor royal government could give in the changelessness of a fixed
aristocracy with its centre in the Lords. Harley's creation of twelve
peers to ensure the sanction of the Lords to the Treaty of Utrecht
showed that the Crown possessed a power of swamping the majority and
changing the balance of opinion in the House of Peers. In 1720 therefore
the Ministry introduced a bill, suggested as was believed by Lord
Sunderland, which professed to secure the liberty of the Upper House by
limiting the power of the Crown in the creation of fresh Peers. The
number of Peers was permanently fixed at the number then sitting in the
House; and creations could only be made when vacancies occurred.
Twenty-five hereditary Scotch Peers were substituted for the sixteen
elected Peers for Scotland. The bill however was strenuously opposed by
Robert Walpole. Not only was it a measure which broke the political
quiet which he looked on as a necessity for the new government, but it
jarred on his good sense as a statesman. It would in fact have rendered
representative government impossible. For representative government was
now coming day by day more completely to mean government by the will of
the House of Commons, carried out by a Ministry which served as the
mouthpiece of that will. But it was only through the prerogative of the
Crown, as exercised under the advice of such a Ministry, that the Peers
could be forced to bow to the will of the Lower House in matters where
their opinion was adverse to that of the Commons; and the proposal of
Sunderland would have brought legislation and government to a dead lock.

[Sidenote: South Sea Bubble.]

It was to Walpole's opposition that the Peerage Bill owed its defeat;
and this success forced his rivals again to admit him, with Townshend,
to a share in the Ministry, though they occupied subordinate offices.
But this arrangement was soon to yield to a more natural one. The sudden
increase of English commerce begot at this moment the mania of
speculation. Ever since the age of Elizabeth the unknown wealth of
Spanish Ame