While favoring the merchants and the colonists, Walpole desired to aid the landed gentry also. He considered the land tax ruinous and unfairly levied, and by 1731 had succeeded in reducing it from four shillings to one shilling on the pound.

THE OLD TABARD INN YARD IN SOUTHWARK. Used before 1866 as a railway and shipping office.

In order to keep the tax at that low rate, and at the same time to make up the loss in revenue, he was obliged to adopt new methods of taxation. Therefore, in 1733, he introduced his Excise Bill, one of the most remarkable of his measures, and one followed by stirring events. He proposed to change certain customs duties into excise duties, by allowing importers to store their commodities, such as tobacco and other imported goods, in warehouses at the docks without paying duty, and by obliging them to pay an internal tax only on those portions of their goods that they took from the warehouses and sold within the country. Thus, instead of paying a customs duty on a commodity like tobacco, the merchants were to pay an internal revenue duty on the amount consumed and to have the privilege of reexportiug what remained. A similar plan had already been tried in the case of silks, pepper, tea, and coffee. The Excise Bill was wholly admirable from a financial point of view, because it would have checked smuggling, made the collecting of duties easier and simpler, would have been a step in the direction of free trade, and would have lightened the burden of the land tax. But it bore the hated name of “excise," and fears were at once aroused lest customs duties were to be changed into internal revenue duties, and lest government officials in greater numbers than before were to be let loose upon England. A fury of opposition was raised within the country, and public opinion was everywhere against the bill. Walpole bent before the storm. Though a majority in parliament could have been obtained for the measure, he decided to push it no further. For almost the first time in English history, public opinion won a victory over a parliamentary majority.

Walpole was chiefly influential in matters of trade and finance, but indirectly he contributed to the shaping of the constitution, not by passing laws, but by the practical work of conducting the government. He organized his followers in the House of Commons and gave shape to party government; he transformed the old group of ministers into a working cabinet and made himself the supreme ministerial head of the government; he raised the House of Commons to a position more important than the House of Lords.

Opposition to Walpole: War with Spain( 1739)

Against a position as strong as that held by Walpole the Tory opposition hurled itself in vain. Bolingbroke, returning to England, became the leader of the Tories, and with the help of Pulteney and a group of Whigs whom Walpole had affronted by his domineering methods, did all that he could to overthrow the ministry.' George I died, and George II succeeded to the throne (1727); but Walpole continued in office, mainly because he was supported by Queen Caroline, who ruled her husband. The failure of the Excise Bill did not weaken the position of Walpole, and it was left for a foreign question, though one intimately connected with the growth of England's commerce, to overthrow him.

After the resignation of Townshend, in 1730, Walpole assumed control of foreign affairs. He continued the alliance with France, which Cardinal Fleury, the French minister, was equally anxious to maintain; and he positively refused to be drawn into wars abroad. Put the war of the Polish Succession (1733-1735) led to a change in Fleury's policy. The French and Spanish Bourbons secretly formed the first “family compact," as it was called, in accordance with which Spain promised to transfer to France the commercial privileges in America that had been granted to Great Britain by the treaty of Utrecht, if in return France would help to wrest Gibraltar away from the English. These commercial privileges had become very important to British merchants and had led to a gradual and illegal extension of British trade in South American ports. The "one ship a year " allowed by the treaty had become a small flotilla, and smuggling was carried on unblushingly.

The exasperated Spanish officials, resenting this abuse, attempted to retaliate. Tales of horrible atrocities, of Englishmen confined in Spanish dungeons and driven to labor in Spanish chain-gangs, were brought back to England and were artfully worked up by Bolingbroke and his Tory colleagues. One Captain Jenkins appeared before the bar of the House and told how his ear had been torn off by a brutal Spanish captain.

England could endure no more; and burning with indignation; hardly righteous, since Spain had a just grievance; demanded redress. Contrary to Walpole's wishes and efforts, war was declared in 1739. The "War of Jenkins's Ear," as it was called, ended in a failure, which was charged against Walpole. The opposition, taking advantage of Walpole's unpopularity, made every effort to overthrow him. Walpole's majority in parliament grew steadily smaller, until in 1741, in connection with a disputed election return, it amounted to but one vote. Therefore, in February, 1742, Walpole resigned and his great ministry came to an end.

Importance of Walpole's Ministry

But Walpole had done his work. The Hanoverian dynasty was firmly established. Great Britain was commercially prosperous, and consequently contented. A new generation of men had grown up since the days of William III and Queen Anne, and the questions of the earlier period no longer troubled the nation. Men no longer worried about the Act of Settlement; the mass of the people wanted stable government, and with this guaranteed, cared little whether the king was a George or a James, a Hanoverian or a Stuart. The new importance of parliament made the doctrine of divine right of little moment, and very few were prepared to risk their lives and their property for the sake of one whose claims to the throne rested on birth only. Trade, financial security, and personal comfort were now of greater importance to the majority of Englishmen than were the quarrels of Continental dynasties or the demands of a Jacobite pretender.

War of the Austrian Succession

Nothing shows better Great Britain's indifference to Continental affairs than the attitude assumed by the British government in the war of the Austrian Succession. The archduke of Austria, Charles VI, who was also the emperor, had only a daughter, Maria Theresa. Fearing that her succession to the Austrian throne would be disputed after his death, he drew up the Pragmatic Sanction, a document designed to secure this succession, and presented it to the European states for acceptance. A majority of the governments signed the document, Great Britain among the number. But no sooner had Charles VI died, in 1740, than Frederick II of Prussia seized Silesia; and France, supporting the claims of the elector of Bavaria to the Austrian throne, prepared for war. King George, as elector of Hanover, was intimately concerned with German affairs.' He and his minister, Lord Carteret, Walpole's successor, made an alliance with Maria Theresa, and hired an army of Hanoverians and Hessians to fight against France. Under the command of the king in person, this army won the battle of Dettingen, on the Main, June 27, 1743, and drove the French army across the Rhine. But the British parliament, saying that the Germans could settle their quarrels among themselves, gave Carteret no support, and he was obliged to resign in 1744. The duke of Newcastle and his brother, Henry Pelham, came into office, but on account of the hostile attitude of France, were compelled to continue the war. Having lost the battle of Fontenoy, May 1, 1745, they gave up the struggle, and devoted themselves to the attainment of peace. In 1748, the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, which restored to each contestant all that had been lost during the war. During the struggle, England's chief interests had been in the navy, which had won two victories over the French fleet, and in the American colonists, who had captured Louisburg in 1745.