It is here that his public career begins. His lot was cast in stirring times. For the year of his entry into Parliament was the fourteenth of Walpole's long administration, and it was not difficult to see menacing cracks in the structure. The Minister himself seems to have been aware that his position was critical; and at the general election in the previous year he had spared no exertions to secure a majority. In his own county of Norfolk, 10,000l. had been spent in support of his candidates without averting their defeat: from his own private means he is said, no doubt with gross exaggeration, to have expended no less than 60,000l. Figures like these, however swollen by rumour, denote the intensity of the struggle. But in spite of all, his losses were considerable. Even Scotland, in those days the hungry dependant of all Governments, was shaken in her allegiance. And, though he gained the victory, the toughness of the contest betokened clearly that his stability was seriously impaired, and that the country was weary of his domination.

For this there were many obvious causes. One, of course, was the universal unpopularity of the Excise scheme. It was also one of the moments in our history when the country is uneasily conscious of weakness and possible humiliation abroad, and when the silent and passive interests of peace weigh lightly in the balance against the smarting burden of wounded self-respect. But the most operative cause lay in Walpole himself.

There is no enigma about Walpole. He sprang from near a score of generations of Norfolk squires who had spent six hundred years in healthy obscurity and the simple pleasures of the country. None of them apparently had brains, or the need of them. From these he inherited a frame hardy and robust, and that taste for the sports of the field that never left him. He had also the advantage of being brought up as a younger son to work, and thus he gained that self-reliant and pertinacious industry which served him so well through long years of high office. From the beginning to the end he was primarily a man of business. Had he not been a politician it cannot be doubted that he would have been a great merchant or a great financier. And, though his lot was cast in politics, a man of business he essentially remained. This is not to say that he was not a consummate parliamentary debater, for that he must have been. But it is to suggest that the key to Walpole's character as Prime Minister lies in his instincts and qualifications as a man of business. His main tendency was not, as with Chesterfield and Carteret and Bolingbroke, towards high statesmanship. His first object was to carry on the business of the country in a business spirit, as economically and as peacefully as possible. His chief preoccupation apart from this was the keeping out of the rival house of Stuart, which would not have employed the firm of Walpole and the Whigs to keep their accounts. It is quite possible that as a patriot he may have also dreaded the probable evils of the Stuart dynasty. But the first reason is amply sufficient. The corruption of which he was undoubtedly guilty, but of which he was by no means the inventor, he perhaps considered as the commission due to customers; or else he may have argued, 'these men have to be bought by somebody, let us do it in a business-like way.' His merciless crushing of any rivals was simply the big firm crushing competition, a familiar feature of commerce. His carrying on a war against Spain in spite of his own conscientious disapproval can only be satisfactorily explained on the same hypothesis. The nation would have war: well, if it must, he could carry it on more cheaply, and limit its mischief more effectually than any other contractor. Moreover, Walpole had all along been the merchants' man. He had given them peace and wealth. Now for commercial purposes they wanted war and he had to gratify them. They had been the main backers of his administration, the deprivation of their support would have left him bare; so when they turned round he had to follow, with scarcely the appearance of leadership.

In these days we should undoubtedly condemn any statesman who declared a war of which he disapproved. Lord Aberdeen morbidly and unjustly accused himself of this offence, and refused to be comforted. That is the other extreme to Walpole's position. But we must remember the political morality of those times. Was there then living a statesman who would have acted differently? From this sweeping question we cannot except Pitt, who was bitterly denouncing Walpole for his pacific attitude, and had afterwards to confess that Walpole had been right.

We regard Walpole, then, first and foremost as a man of business, led into the great error with which history reproaches him by his brother men of business. Still, his qualities in that capacity would not have maintained him for years as Prime Minister. They proved him to be a hard-working man with practical knowledge of affairs and strong common sense; a sagacious man who hated extremes. He had besides the highest qualities of a parliamentary leader. Of imagination, unless it may be inferred from his palace and picture gallery, he seems to have been totally destitute. But he had dauntless courage and imperturbable temper.

To his courage George II., who was not profuse of praise, gave ardent testimony. 'He is a brave fellow,' he would cry out vehemently, with a flush and an oath, 'he has more spirit than any man I ever knew;' a compliment ill-requited by Sir Robert, who declared that his master, if he knew anything of him, was, 'with all his personal bravery, as great a political coward as ever wore a crown.' Early in his career as Prime Minister Sir Robert, who had the art, rare among eighteenth century politicians, of inditing pointed and pregnant letters, had written to an Irish Viceroy: 'I have weathered great storms before now, and shall not be lost in an Irish hurricane.'[104] This was no vain boast; it was the spirit in which he habitually conducted affairs. In truth Walpole's courage stands in no need of witness, it speaks for itself; his very defects arose from it or prove it. His jealousy of ability which deprived him of precious allies and compelled him to fight single-handed, his intolerance of independence in his party which had the same effect, all show the dauntless self-confidence of the man. He wanted no competitors, no dubious allies, no assistance but that of unflagging votes or diligent service; for all else he relied on himself alone.

This great Minister had all the defects of his qualities as well as one which seemed curiously alien to them. Part of his strength lay in a coarse and burly, if cynical, geniality. His temper, as we have said, was imperturbable; we shall see this even in the closing scene of his ministry; it was even cordial, and sometimes boisterous. He loved to seem rather a country gentleman than a statesman. He seemed most natural when shooting and carousing at Houghton, or carousing and hunting at Richmond. But his appearance was deceptive; he was what the French would call 'un faux bonhomme,' a spurious good fellow. Good nature perhaps could hardly have survived the desperate battles and intrigues in which this hard-bitten old statesman had been engaged all his life. And so under this bluff and debonair exterior there was concealed a jealousy of power, passing the jealousy of woman, and the ruthless vindictiveness of a Red Indian. To the opposition of his political foes he opposed a stout and unflinching front which shielded a gang of mediocrities; with these enemies he fought a battle in which quarter was neither granted nor expected. But his own forces were kept under martial law; anything like opposition or rivalry within his ranks he crushed in the relentless spirit of Peter the Great. By these methods he had not merely maintained an iron discipline among his own supporters, but had himself constructed by alienation and proscription the opposition to his administration, an opposition which comprised consummate abilities and undying resentments. For he had driven from him and united in a league of implacable revenge almost all the men of power and leading in Parliament. Politics to them were embodied in one controlling idea; how to compass the fall, the ruin, the impeachment of Walpole. The undaunted Minister faced them with confident serenity, though they were not enemies to be disdained. Pulteney, Wyndham, Chesterfield, and Carteret were men of the highest ability and distinction. Barnard and Polwarth, Shippen and Sandys, were from character or intellect scarcely less redoubtable. Behind them lurked Bolingbroke, excluded, indeed, from Parliament by the vigilant detestation of Walpole, but guiding and inspiring from his enforced retirement, the seer and oracle of all the Minister's enemies, for—

Prominent among these stately combatants was an anomalous figure with a brain as shallow and futile as St. John's was active and brilliant, but by the nature of things as formidable as Bolingbroke was impotent, Frederick Prince of Wales. For Frederick was soon to add to the second position in the country the leadership of the Opposition. The King's health was supposed to be precarious, though he lived cheerfully and not ingloriously for another quarter of a century. And the Heir Apparent, feeling conscious of his advantages, and determined to assert himself, became the complacent puppet of all the factions opposed to his father's Government. His Court, indeed, resembled that famous cave to which were gathered every one that was discontented and every one that was in distress. All who had been spurned or ousted by Walpole, all who were under the displeasure of the King, all who saw little prospect of advancement under the present reign, hastened to rally round the Heir Apparent. He was soon to employ Pitt about his person. It is well, then, to pause a moment and consider this prominent and formidable figure.

Frederick, Prince of Wales, is one of the idle mysteries of English history. The problem does not lie in his being a political leader, in spite of the general contempt in which he was held by his contemporaries and associates; for an heir-apparent to the Crown can always, if he chooses, be a factor in party politics, though it is scarcely possible that his intervention can be beneficial. But no circumstance known to us can explain the virulence of aversion with which the King and Queen regarded him, which was so intense as to be almost incredible. They were both good haters, and yet they hated no one half so much as their eldest son. His father called him the greatest beast and liar and scoundrel in existence. His mother and his sister wished hourly to hear of his death. This violence of unnatural loathing is not to be accounted for by any known facts. Frederick was a poor creature, no doubt, a vain and fatuous coxcomb. But human beings are constantly the parents of coxcombs without regarding them as vermin. The only conjecture in regard to the matter which seems to furnish adequate ground for these feelings is that the King was bred in the narrow school of a little German State, where, though nothing less than affection was expected between a prince and his heir, discipline was rigidly observed; so that the conduct of Frederick, in assuming a position independent and defiant of his father, and in openly heading an opposition to his Government, was an offence the more unspeakable and unpardonable as it had been absolutely beyond the limits of Hanoverian contemplation. There was, it must be confessed, an hereditary predisposition to this parental relation. The King himself, when Prince of Wales, had been placed under arrest by his father for the somewhat venial offence of insulting the Duke of Newcastle. He had submitted himself to his disgrace, and his opposition had only been passive and inarticulate; he had never dreamed of forming a faction hostile to the Crown. His only real crimes had been his right of succession and a fictitious popularity founded on dislike of his father's mistresses. And yet his father hated him almost as much as father ever hated son. It was reserved for George II. to discover a deeper abhorrence for his own heir. With his views of absolute authority, a peculiar degree of detestation had to be discovered for a Prince of Wales who had not merely the inherent vice of heirship apparent but the gratuitous offence of an active opposition which his father deemed flagrant rebellion. Given violent temper, ill manners, and a sort of family tradition, the cause of wrath can best be thus explained.

Beyond this we know nothing for certain, and presumably shall never know more. There are some facts, but they are insufficient.

It is said that as a mere boy he gamed and drank and kept a mistress. By this last scandal the royal family was enabled to present to the world the unedifying spectacle of grandfather, father, and son simultaneously living under these immoral conditions; and all three, it is said, successively with the same woman. But these facts alone would certainly not have accounted for his father's displeasure. Again, it is narrated that when his tutor complained of him his mother said that these were page's tricks. 'Would to God they were, madam,' replied the tutor, 'but they are rather the tricks of lackeys and knaves.' And tricky Frederick undoubtedly was from the beginning to the end. But trickiness, though it was not among the King's faults, and though it would excite his just contempt, cannot alone have caused the intensity of his hatred.

One if not two of Frederick's escapades were concerned with designs of marriage. He was discovered on the point of concluding a secret alliance with Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia, with whom he professed himself in love, and who afterwards became known to us as Margravine of Bareith; on another occasion it is said that he was lured by a dowry of 100,000l. into a betrothal with Lady Diana Spencer, grand-daughter of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Both these affairs were interrupted at the last moment. In both cases the King was irritated by the underhand proceedings of his son, and by the total lack of a confidence which, as he probably omitted to remember, he had done nothing to gain. But his crowning outrage was a monkey-trick, both wanton and barbarous. When he had at last married a princess of his father's choice, and his wife was seized with the first pangs of maternity in the King's palace of Hampton Court, he hurried her off, in her agony and in spite of her entreaties, to St. James's. At any moment of the journey a catastrophe might have occurred. What the motive was for this cruel and unmeaning escapade cannot be guessed, for his own explanations were futile. It was said that his father suspected him of an intention to foist a spurious child on his family and that he resented the suspicion. If that were so his action was exactly suited to confirm it. Whatever his purpose may have been, the King and Queen, from whom the imminence of the Princess's situation had been carefully concealed, were naturally and grossly insulted. The King banished him from his palace and presence, and forbade the Court to all who should visit him. Nor was there ever an approach to reconciliation or forgiveness in the fourteen years that the Prince had yet to live. The King would receive him at Court and would express the hope that his wife was in good health; that was the extent of their relations. But though this was the culminating point of his known misconduct, it would almost seem that there was some more occult reason which we do not know. We only guess at its existence from the record of Lord Hardwicke. At the time of this last scandal 'Sir Robert Walpole,' says the Chancellor, 'informed me of certain passages between the King and himself, and between the King and the Prince, of too high and secret a nature even to be trusted to this narrative; but from thence I found great reason to think that this unhappy difference between the King and Queen and His Royal Highness turned upon some points of a more interesting and important nature than have hitherto appeared.'[105] There, then, is the mystery, without a key, with no room even for conjecture. But the cause must have been dire that evoked so deadly a passion of hatred between parents and son.

Those who care to read in detail the coarse and violent expressions of this unnatural repulsion may glut their appetite in Lord Hervey's memoirs. One or two such passages will serve as specimens of the rest. The Queen and Princess Caroline, Frederick's sister, made no ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy. Princess Caroline, who, Hervey tells us, 'had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood,' who was in a word an exemplary and charming person, declared that she grudged him every hour he had to breathe, and reproached Hervey with being 'so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast' (those were her words) 'cared for anything but his own nauseous self, that he loved anything but money, that he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke.' The Queen, not to be outdone, declared that she would give it under her hand 'that my dear firstborn is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it.'[106] Even on her deathbed she could not be brought to receive or forgive him. If Lord Hervey, his bitter enemy, can be credited, this obduracy was not at the last without justification. Lord Hervey declares that the Prince crowded the Queen's anteroom with his emissaries to convey to him the earliest information of her condition. As the bulletins of the Queen's decline reached him, he would say, 'Well, now we shall have some good news; she cannot hold out much longer.' All this need not be literally believed, but it affords a picture of family rancour which can scarcely have been equalled in the history of mankind.

From the time of the public quarrel with his parents the Prince of Wales gave himself up to political opposition. He wielded, indeed, formidable weapons of offence. His father was avaricious, secluded, and disliked; Frederick laid himself out to be thought generous, accessible, and popular. He knew well that every symptom of national affection for himself was a stab to the King. He and his family, at a time when French fashions were all the rage, ostentatiously wore none but English goods. He trained his children to act Addison's Cato. Nor did he disdain more social arts. He would go to fairs, bull-baitings, races, and rowing matches; he would visit gipsy encampments; he became familiar to the people. He would assist at a fire in London, amid shouts from the mob, as he and his court alleged, of 'Crown him! crown him!' At Epsom there is a tradition that when living there he fought a chimney-sweep with his fists, and erected a monument in generous acknowledgment of his own defeat.

In private life he was essentially frivolous. When his father's troops were besieging Carlisle, the Prince had a model of the citadel made in confectionery, while he and the ladies of the court bombarded it with sugar-plums. This seems emblematic of his whole career.

But his main and favourite diversion had a graver aspect: it lay in political cabals of which he was the puppet and the figurehead, and in forming futile ministries and policies for his own reign. Of these last a curious example is preserved among the Bedford Papers.[107]

All political malcontents of the slightest importance were sure of a cordial reception at Leicester House or Kew. There all could warm their wants and disappointments with the sunshine of royal patronage and the cheering prospect of a new reign. 'Remember that the King is sixty-one, and I am thirty-seven,'[108] said Frederick, and this calculation coloured his whole life. The future was freely discounted and anticipated in the Prince's circle, so that there, as in the Court of the Pretender, the faithful adherent might receive some high office to be enjoyed after the death of the King, but with this substantial difference: that whereas what James distributed were shadows, the awards of Frederick required only common good faith and the death of an old man to make them realities. Bubb for example, the most avid and unabashed of political harlots, gravely kissed his patron's hand for a Secretaryship of State, and, according to Walpole, a dukedom, immediately afterwards nominating his under-secretary, to show the solidity of the arrangement. Henley, who was afterwards under different circumstances to be Chancellor, was grievously disappointed to find that Dr. Lee was to have the seals. And so they snapped and snarled over the spoils, while the Prince complacently made his appointments, and apportioned the functions of the future. So far as he was concerned it was all barren enough. His little projects, his little ambitions, his little ministries, his political post-obits, were all cut short by the sudden shears of Death. His councillors and followers were scattered to the winds, and Bubb had to hasten to make his peace with the powers that be, and to exchange his contingent Secretaryship of State for an actual Treasurership of the Navy. The Prince's other post-obits, his debts, were, it would seem, never paid.[109]

To sum up, with regard to Frederick we have a few certain facts: the hatred of his parents and sisters, and a singular unanimity of scorn from his contemporaries. There is not perhaps in existence a single favourable testimony. We have many portraits, one at Windsor of an innocent lad in a red coat playing the violoncello with his sisters, which is pleasant enough; the later ones all stamped with a pretentious silliness which affirms the verdict of his own day. Then we have the mysterious intimation of Lord Hardwicke of some deep and sinister cause for the alienation of his parents. This, however, unsupported and unexplained, carries us no further, and is merely an excuse for the unnatural aversion of his family. Beyond that mystery, the word 'fatuous' seems exactly to embody all that we know of this prince; his appearance, morals, manners, and intellect are all summed up in that single expression.

On the other hand, there are traits of generosity which are recorded, there is his apparent popularity, there is the general grief for his death; but it may well be surmised that it was not difficult for the son of George II. and the grandson of George I. to be popular and regretted. On the whole, may we not conclude that the arbitrary discipline of Hanover in early life made him incurably tricky and untruthful, that he was an empty and frivolous coxcomb, but not without kindly instincts; and that his weaknesses and frailties, whatever they may have been, laid a grave responsibility on the parents who reared and cursed him?