though hostile to the bill, declared that they should only expose themselves to defeat by resisting it. But Walpole persisted in his opposition, and declared that, if his party deserted him, he would contend against the bill single-handed. He asserted that it would meet with strong resistance from the country gentlemen who hoped some time or other to roach the peerage—a hope which the bill, if carried, would extinguish for ever.
By these endeavours Walpole managed to array a considerable body of the commons against it. It was introduced on the 8th of December, and Sir John Packington, Sir Richard Steele, Smith, Methuen, and others joined him in attacking it. Steele made a very powerful speech against it, but the grand assault was that of Walpole. He put out all his strength, and delivered an harangue such as he had never achieved till that day. He did not spare the motives of the king, though handling them with much tact, and was unsparingly severe on the Scotch clauses, and on the notorious subserviency of the Scotch representative peers. He declared that the sixteen elective Scotch peers were already a dead weight on the country; and he asked what they would be when made twenty-five, and hereditary? He declared that such a bill would make the lords masters of the king, and shut up the door of honour to the rest of the nation. Amongst the Romans, he said, the way to the Temple of Fame was through the temple of Virtue; but if this bill passed, this would never be the case in this country. There would be no arriving at honours but through the winding-sheet of an old, decrepit lord, or the tomb of an extinct noble family. Craggs, Lechmere, Aislabie, Hampton, and other ministerial whigs supported the bill; but, in the words of Speaker Onslow, the declamation of Walpole had borne down everything before it, and the measure was defeated by a majority of two hundred and sixty-nine to one hundred and seventy-seven.
In our time this defeat would, as a matter of course, have turned out the ministry, but in that day it had no such effect. They continued to hold office, and to command undiminished majorities on other questions. Still more singuar was its effect, for it induced them to offer office to their triumphant opponent Walpole, who not only accepted a subordinate post amongst them—the paymaster of the forces—but consented to support the very clauses regarding the Scotch peers which he had so firmly denounced, should they be inclined to bring forward the bill a third time—a sufficient proof, if any were wanting, that Walpole did not expect to make his way through the temple of virtue, but through the easy abandonment of any principle which lay in the way of his ambition.
The spring of 1720 was a period of remarkable national prosperity. By the able management of Stanhope, all the schemes of Alberoni were defeated, and that minister driven from Spain. The Spaniards were driven from Sicily, the regent of France was confirmed in his power, Holland and Austria were brought again into alliance with his, and the hostility of the Prussians, Danes, and Poles allayed. The czar still held aloof from treaty, but his alliances were weakened, and the attempts of the pretender were rendered nugatory. At home he had strengthened his ministry by the accession of Walpole, Townshend, and Methuen. By the mediation of Walpole, a reconciliation betwixt the king and prince of Wales was effected, and the hopes of the Jacobites proportionably reduced. Bishop Atterbury, the most industrious and steadfast of Jacobites, wrote to the pretender to express his alarm at the aspect of affairs; that though the seeming reconciliation was far from sincere, there was a probability that time would make it so; that the common necessity of affairs would drive these new allies into measures of mutual interest, and the grand money schemes projected of late, would settle and fix them in such a manner, that it would not be easy to shake them. Under the flattering influence of these auspicious appearances, George departed for Hanover on the 14th of June, attended by Stanhope, and adding before his departure lord Townshend and the duke of Devonshire to the council of regency.
But "the grand money schemes projected of late," which appeared to Atterbury and others calculated to cement the royal peace and strengthen the foundation of the government and nation, were destined to produce a very different effect. They were pregnant with the most unparalleled delusions and ruin. The whole public were smiling in the most golden hopes on the bosom of a volcano. One John Law, a Scotchman, had a few years previous broached a grand scheme for paying off the national debt. It had not taken in England, and he proceeded to France to try to introduce it there. He established a bank in Paris, which became successful, and he there unfolded his ulterior views. These were to embody the public debt as stock in an "Indian Company," which, by being endowed with the exclusive privilege of trading to the Mississippi, was to make enormous profits, and by this means to speedily liquidate the debt. This project gradually seized on the public imagination, and in December, 1719, had grown into a popular mania. The "actions" or shares, or as we should now call it, the scrip of the new company, sold for more than twenty times their real value. The Rue Quincampoix was the place where this scrip was sold, and it became thronged all day like a fair. The smallest room in the street let for incredible sums, the clerks could not register fast enough the purchase of stocks, and a little hunchback was said to have made fifty thousand francs by letting out his back for a desk! The arrogance of Law, the grand adventurer, became prodigious. Voltaire says that he had seen him at court followed humbly by dukes, marshals, and bishops; and even Dubois, the prime minister, and Orleans, the regent, were treated with the utmost freedom by him. He attempted to mortify the English, by saying that there was but one great kingdom in Europe and one great town, and these were France and Paris. His haughtiness had the effect of rousing the resentment of lord Stair, who had so long and brilliantly conducted our diplomatic business at the French capital; and the feud betwixt him and Law became so violent, that Stanhope was compelled to make a visit to Paris on that account, and when there, to displace Stair and send Sir Robert Sutton in his stead. The success of this adventurer deprived England of the eminent services of Stair for twenty years.
So far as the French government was concerned, the scheme of Law answered very well, for it contrived to throw
