ending, as well as drain the forces which would have
enabled Walpole to deal with it.

[Sidenote: War with Spain.]

But his efforts were in vain. His negotiations were foiled by the frenzy
of the one country and the pride of the other. At home his enemies
assailed him with a storm of abuse. Pope and Johnson alike lent their
pens to lampoon the minister. Ballad-singers trolled out their rimes to
the crowd on "the cur-dog of Britain and spaniel of Spain." His position
had been weakened by the death of the queen; and it was now weakened
yet more by the open hostility of the Prince of Wales, who in his hatred
of his father had come to hate his father's ministers as heartily as
George the Second had hated those of George the First. His mastery of
the House of Commons too was no longer unquestioned. The Tories were
slowly returning to Parliament, and their numbers had now mounted to a
hundred and ten. The numbers and the violence of the "Patriots" had
grown with the open patronage of Prince Frederick. The country was
slowly turning against him. The counties now sent not a member to his
support. Walpole's majority was drawn from the boroughs; it rested
therefore on management, on corruption, and on the support of the
trading classes. But with the cry for a commercial war the support of
the trading class failed him. Even in his own cabinet, though he had
driven from it every man of independence, he was pressed at this
juncture to yield by the Duke of Newcastle and his brother Henry Pelham,
who were fast acquiring political importance from their wealth, and from
their prodigal devotion of it to the purchase of parliamentary support.
But it was not till he stood utterly alone that Walpole gave way, and
that he consented in 1739 to a war against Spain.

[Sidenote: The Austrian Succession.]

"They may ring their bells now," the great minister said bitterly, as
peals and bonfires welcomed his surrender; "but they will soon be
wringing their hands." His foresight was at once justified. No sooner
had Admiral Vernon appeared off the coast of South America with an
English fleet, and captured Porto Bello, than France gave an indication
of her purpose to act on the secret compact by a formal declaration that
she would not consent to any English settlement on the mainland of South
America, and by despatching two squadrons to the West Indies. But it was
plain that the union of the Bourbon courts had larger aims than the
protection of Sp