pparent of the throne,
to make an alliance with the Tories, and a truce even with the
Jacobites. After Sir Robert's fall, the ban which lay on the Tory party
was taken off. The chief places in the administration continued to be
filled by Whigs, and, indeed, could scarcely have been filled otherwise;
for the Tory nobility and gentry, though strong in numbers and in
property, had among them scarcely a single man distinguished by talents,
either for business or for debate. A few of them, however were admitted
to subordinate offices; and this indulgence produced a softening effect
on the temper of the whole body. The first levee of George the Second
after Walpole's resignation was a remarkable spectacle. Mingled with the
constant supporters of the House of Brunswick, with the Russells, the
Cavendishes, and the Pelhams, appeared a crowd of faces utterly unknown
to the pages and gentlemen ushers, lords of rural manors, whose ale and
foxhounds were renowned in the neighborhood of the Mendip hills, or
round the Wrekin, but who had never crossed the threshold of the palace
since the days when Oxford, with the white staff in his hand, stood
behind Queen Anne.

During the eighteen years which followed this day, both factions were
gradually sinking deeper and deeper into repose. The apathy of the
public mind is partly to be ascribed to the unjust violence with which
the administration of Walpole had been assailed. In the body politic, as
in the natural body, morbid languor generally succeeds morbid
excitement. The people had been maddened by sophistry, by calumny, by
rhetoric, by stimulants applied to the national pride. In the fulness of
bread, they had raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoying
such a measure of civil and religious freedom as, till then, no great
society had ever known, they had cried out for a Timoleon or a Brutus to
stab their oppressor to the heart. They were in this frame of mind when
the change of administration took place; and they soon found that there
was to be no change whatever in the system of government. The natural
consequences followed. To frantic zeal succeeded sullen indifference.
The cant of patriotism had not merely ceased to charm the public ear,
but had become as nauseous as the cant of Puritanism after the downfall
of the Rump. The hot fit was over; the cold fit had begun; and it was
long before seditious arts, or even real grievances, could bring back
the fiery paroxysm which ha