due to the attacks on the expenditure of the secret-service fund, with regard to which George II was particularly sensitive. These were led by Shippen (3 July 1727) and Pulteney (21 Feb. 1727 and 29 Feb. 1728). The result was that Atterbury's son-in-law Morice wrote to him on 24 June 1728, ‘Walpole gains ground and governs more absolutely than in the latter reign. Mr. Pulteney's removal from the lieutenancy of one of the Yorkshire Ridings is one instance of his power.’ The influence of the ministry with the king was strengthened by the success of the negotiations for the treaty of Seville [see Stanhope, William, (1690?–1756)], signed on 9 Nov. 1729, which for the time deprived the Jacobites of their last hope of aid from a foreign power.
The opposition now conceived the project of undermining Walpole's power by depriving him of the customary means of securing it in the House of Commons. On 16 Feb. 1730 Sandys [see Sandys, Samuel] introduced the pension bill to disable persons in receipt of pensions from sitting in parliament. The king ordered Walpole to oppose it in the House of Commons, but he refused, leaving it on this occasion, and in 1734 and 1740, to be thrown out by the lords (Hallam, Const. Hist. iii. 352). Meanwhile his relations with Townshend increased in difficulty. In 1729 an altercation between them ended in a scuffle and drawn swords. In December there were rumours of Townshend's retirement (Lady Mary Howard to Lord Carlisle, Carlisle MSS. p. 62). The tories, sensible that the direction of foreign policy was passing into Walpole's hands, now violently attacked him on the score of the French alliance, of which he was known to be a warm advocate. They inflamed the public mind with pretences that the Walpoles were betraying the interests of England by neglecting to insist on the provision of the treaty of Utrecht, and of that of 1717 for the demolition of the fortifications of Dunkirk. At the instance of Bolingbroke, Sir W. Wyndham brought on a debate with the object of proving that Dunkirk was becoming an increasing menace to the south coast, and indirectly of breaking the French alliance by insisting on its complete dismantlement. In the debate which followed (27 Feb. 1729–30) Walpole made a vigorous attack on Bolingbroke, and carried an address approving the action of the ministry by 274 to 149. So brilliant was Walpole's defence that the debate was currently spoken of as ‘the Dunkirk day’ (see Coxe, ii. 676, 687), ‘the greatest day,’ said Horatio Walpole, ‘that ever I knew.’ In the course of this session Walpole broke with the accepted policy of controlling the commercial interests of the colonies by exclusive reference to the advantage of the mother country. He passed an act (the Rice Act, 3 Geo. II, c. 28) the preamble of which affirms the then novel principle that the prosperity of the mother country is aided by care for the prosperity of the colony. By this act Carolina was no longer compelled to export rice exclusively to England. In 1735 he extended the same privilege to Georgia (8 Geo. II, c. 19). On the other hand, he renewed the charter of the East India Company till 1766, despite the protests of the opposition, for the payment of 200,000l. and the reduction by one per cent. of the interest due on account of its loans to government.
On 15 May 1730 Townshend resigned. His ‘irascible and domineering and jealous’ temper (Hervey, Memoirs, i. 108) had long rendered him distasteful to the queen. The death of Walpole's sister Dorothy, lady Townshend, on 29 March 1726, had weakened the link that bound the two ministers together. But it was the queen who, as Horace Walpole said, ‘blew into a flame the ill-blood’ between the two by her exclusive reliance upon Walpole. ‘As long,’ said Walpole, ‘as the firm was Townshend and Walpole, the utmost harmony prevailed; but it no sooner became Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong and a separation ensued.’ Walpole, alive to the growth of the opposition and of the dangers attending a monopoly of power, now made overtures to some of its leaders. Wilmington [see Compton, Spencer], the king's favourite, he succeeded in detaching and made him lord privy seal. To Pulteney he offered Townshend's place with a peerage. The intermediary was the queen. But Pulteney refused all advances. Chesterfield, who had earned encouragement by betraying the plans of the opposition to the queen, was made lord steward. Foreign affairs, nominally in the hands of Newcastle and Harrington, were entirely controlled by Walpole.
The strength of Walpole's position and his well-known toleration gave the dissenters hope that their claims as steady supporters of his government might at last be recognised. In 1727 he had passed the first (1 Geo. II, st. 2, c. 23) of a series of indemnity acts exempting from the test those who had not duly qualified themselves for the offices they held. They now agitated for a repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The Sacheverell affair had taught Walpole caution in ecclesiastical matters. He did not think their request ‘unreasonable,’ but for a
