h its title
disputed, England should not encourage France to continue the friendly
policy of Louis XIV towards James, the deposed Stuart Pretender. England
had just made a new, determined, and arrogant enemy by forcing upon
Spain the deep humiliation of ceding Gibraltar, which had been taken
in 1704 by Admiral Rooke with allied forces. The proudest monarchy in
Europe was compelled to see a spot of its own sacred territory held
permanently by a rival nation. Gibraltar Spain was determined to
recover. Its loss drove her into the arms of the enemies of England and
remains to this day a grievance which on occasion Spanish politicians
know well how to make useful.

Great Britain was now under the direction of a leader whose policy was
peace. A nation is happy when a born statesman with a truly liberal mind
and a genuine love of his country comes to the front in its affairs.
Such a man was Sir Robert Walpole. He was a Whig squire, a plain country
gentleman, with enough of culture to love good pictures and the ancient
classics, but delighting chiefly in sports and agriculture, hard
drinking and politics. When only twenty-seven he was already a leader
among the Whigs; at thirty-two he was Secretary for War; and before he
was forty he had become Prime Minister, a post which he really created
and was the first Englishman to hold. Friendship with France marked a
new phase of British policy. Walpole's baffled enemies said that he was
bribed by France. His shrewd insight kept France lukewarm in its support
of the Stuart rising in 1715, which he punished with great severity. But
it was as a master of finance that he was strongest. While continental
nations were wasting men and money Walpole gloried in saving English
lives and English gold. He found new and fruitful modes of taxation, but
when urged to tax the colonies he preferred, as he said, to leave that
to a bolder man. It is a pity that anyone was ever found bold enough to
do it.

Walpole's policy endured for a quarter of a century. He abandoned it
only after a bitter struggle in which he was attacked as sacrificing the
national honor for the sake of peace. Spain was an easy mark for those
who wished to arouse the warlike spirit. She still persecuted and burned
heretics, a great cause of offense, in Protestant Britain, and she was
rigorous in excluding foreigners from trading with her colonies. To be
the one exception in this policy of exclusion was the privilege enjoyed
by Br