sy the material interests of
the inarticulate Tory squire, who still harbored a sullen loyalty to the
Stuarts, as well as of the merchants and moneyed men whose fortunes were
bound up with the Revolution settlement. And year by year the
Parliamentary influence of the latter increased. Members of the South
Sea and East India Companies had seats in the House of Commons; and the
West India Islands, where, it was estimated in 1775, property to the
value of L14,000,000 was "owned by persons who live in England," were in
very truth represented there. William Beckford, who entered Parliament
in 1747, possessed of a great fortune acquired in Jamaica sugar
plantations, and soon to become all-powerful in "the City," was only the
most famous of those who effectively voiced the demands of colonial
landlords and London merchants. "Such men used in times past to come hat
in hand," said Newcastle; "now the second word is, 'you shall hear of it
in another place.'" In fact, although ministers bowed to the king and
spoke of His Majesty's Government, they knew well that the fortunes of
the kingdom were in the hands of the big property interests that
buttressed an unstable throne.

And these masters of England, never interested in the colonies apart
from their commercial value, were less so than ever during this Indian
summer of prosperous content. Rising prices made the era of, the first
Georges a golden age of agriculture; while the effect of the French wars
was to "exalt beyond measure the maritime and commercial supremacy of
England." The Treaty of Meuthen facilitated the importation of cloth
into Portugal and the flow of Brazilian bullion to London. Levantine
trade began to open to England after the conquest of Gibraltar and
Minorca. English merchants acquired special privileges at Cadiz by the
Treaty of Utrecht; and the _Assiento_ gave to the South Sea Company a
monopoly of importing slaves into New Spain, and enabled it to secure,
"by the ingenuity of British merchants," the greater part of the general
commerce of the Spanish colonies. In 1710, the number of vessels
clearing from English ports was 3550; it was 6614 in 1714; and during
the same period the shipping of London increased from 806 to 1550. In
1758, imports from the continental colonies into England stood at
L648,683, and from the West Indies at L1,834,036. "The colonies," said
the elder Horace Walpole, "are the source of all our riches"; for it was
the colonies, and above