and philosophers turned gamblers, when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence, the periwig-company, and the Spanish-jackass-company, and the quicksilver-fixation-company, Walpole’s calm good sense preserved him from the general infatuation.  He condemned the prevailing madness in public, and turned a considerable sum by taking advantage of it in private.  When the crash came, when ten thousand families were reduced to beggary in a day, when the people, in the frenzy of their rage and despair, clamoured, not only against the lower agents in the juggle, but against the Hanoverian favourites, against the English ministers, against the King himself, when Parliament met, eager for confiscation and blood, when members of the House of Commons proposed that the directors should be treated like parricides in ancient Rome, tied up in sacks, and thrown into the Thames, Walpole was the man on whom all parties turned their eyes.  Four years before he had been driven from power by the intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope; and the lead in the House of Commons had been intrusted to Craggs and Aislabie.  Stanhope was no more.  Aislabie was expelled from Parliament on account of his disgraceful conduct regarding the South-Sea scheme.  Craggs was perhaps saved by a timely death from a similar mark of infamy.  A large minority in the House of Commons voted for a severe censure on Sunderland, who, finding it impossible to withstand the force of the prevailing sentiment, retired from office, and outlived his retirement but a very short time.  The schism which had divided the Whig party was now completely healed.  Walpole had no opposition to encounter except that of the Tories; and the Tories were naturally regarded by the King with the strongest suspicion and dislike.

For a time business went on with a smoothness and a despatch such as had not been known since the days of the Tudors.  During the session of 1724, for example, there was hardly a single division except on private bills.  It is not impossible that, by taking the course which Pelham afterwards took, by admitting into the Government all the rising talents and ambition of the Whig party, and by making room here and there for a Tory not unfriendly to the House of Brunswick, Walpole might have averted the tremendous conflict in which he passed the later years of his administration, and in which he was at length vanquished.  The Opposition which overthrew him was an opposition created by his own policy, by his own insatiable love of power.

In the very act of forming his Ministry he turned one of the ablest and most attached of his supporters into a deadly enemy.  Pulteney had strong public and private claims to a high situation in the new arrangement.  His fortune was immense.  His private character was respectable.  He was already a distinguished speaker.  He had acquired official experience in an important post.  He had been, through all changes of fortune, a consistent Whig.