The medical profession, however, generally refused to sanction the practice, and the clergy in many cases preached against it as an “invention of Satan, intended to counteract the purposes of an all-wise Providence.”  But through the perseverance and good sense of Lady Montagu, with a few others, the new practice gradually gained ground.  Subsequently Dr. Jenner began to make experiments of a different kind, which led, late in the century (1796-1798), to the discovery of vaccination, by which millions of lives have been saved; this, and the discovery of the use of ether in our own time (S615), may justly be called two of the greatest triumphs of the art of medicine.

538.  How Sir Robert Walpole governed.

We have seen that Sir Robert Walpole (S534) became the first Prime Minister in 1721, and that he continued in office as head of the Cabinet, or Government, until near the middle of the next reign.  He was an able financier, and succeeded in reducing the National Debt (S503).  He believed in keeping the country out of war, and also, as we have seen, out of “bubble speculation” (S536).  Finally, he was determined at all cost to maintain the Whig party in power, and the Protestant Hanoverian sovereigns on the throne (SS515, 532).

In order to accomplish these objects, he openly bribed members of Parliament to support his party; he bought votes and carried elections by gifts of titles, honors, and bank notes.  He thus proved to his own satisfaction the truth of his theory that most men “have their price,” and that an appeal to the pocketbook is both quicker and surer than an appeal to the principle.  But before the end of his ministry he had to confess that he had found in the House of Commons a “boy patriot,” as he sneeringly called him, named William Pitt (afterward Earl of Chatham), whom neither his money could buy nor his ridicule move (SS549, 550).

Bad as Walpole’s policy was in its corrupting influence on the nation, it as an admission that the time had come when the King could no longer venture to rule by force, as in hte days of the Stuarts.  It meant that the Crown no longer possessed the arbitrary power it once wielded.  Walpole was a fox, not a lion; and “foxes,” as Emerson tells us, “are so cunning because they are not strong.”

539.  Summary.

Though George I did little for England except keep the “Pretender” (S535) from the throne by occupying it himself, yet that was no small advantage, since it gave the country peace.  The establishment of Cabinet Government under Sir Robert Walpole as the first Prime Minister, the suppression of the Jacobite insurrection, the disastrous collapse of the South Sea Bubble, and the introduction of vaccination are the principle events.

George II—­1727-1760

540.  Accession and Character.