The other schemes of which the public mind was full were less dangerous than this.  Some of them were in themselves harmless.  But none of them would have done much good, and most of them were extravagantly absurd.  What they were we may learn from the instructions which many constituent bodies, immediately after the change of administration, sent up to their representatives.  A more deplorable collection of follies can hardly be imagined.  There is, in the first place, a general cry for Walpole’s head.  Then there are better complaints of the decay of trade, a decay which, in the judgment of these enlightened politicians, was brought about by Walpole and corruption.  They would have been nearer to the truth if they had attributed their sufferings to the war into which they had driven Walpole against his better judgment.  He had foretold the effects of his unwilling concession.  On the day when hostilities against Spain were proclaimed, when the heralds were attended into the city by the chiefs of the Opposition, when the Prince of Wales himself stopped at Temple Bar to drink success to the English arms, the minister heard all the steeples of the city jingling with a merry peal, and muttered, “They may ring the bells now; they will be wringing their hands before long.”

Another grievance, for which of course Walpole and corruption were answerable, was the great exportation of English wool.  In the judgment of the sagacious electors of several large towns, the remedying of this evil was a matter second only in importance to the hanging of Sir Robert.  There were also earnest injunctions that the members should vote against standing armies in time of peace, injunctions which were, to say the least, ridiculously unseasonable in the midst of a war which was likely to last, and which did actually last, as long as the Parliament.  The repeal of the Septennial Act, as was to be expected, was strongly pressed.  Nothing was more natural than that the voters should wish for a triennial recurrence of their bribes and their ale.  We feel firmly convinced that the repeal of the Septennial Act, unaccompanied by a complete reform of the constitution of the elective body, would have been an unmixed curse to the country.  The only rational recommendation which we can find in all these instructions is that the number of placemen in Parliament should be limited, and that pensioners should not he allowed to sit there.  It is plain, however, that this cure was far from going to the root of the evil, and that, if it had been adopted without other reforms, secret bribery would probably have been more practised than ever.