The Opposition to Walpole

Abstract

Public and private morality were now under the microscope, and in the person of Sir Robert Walpole, the first or ‘prime’ minister of George I, the age was provided with a massive example to praise or to censure. As he was an obvious target, the ‘Great Man’ quickly became for Augustan satirists the type of the unscrupulous, self-seeking politician. His contemporary reputation had not benefited from his involvement in both the South Sea Bubble cover-up (as a consequence of which he earned himself the nick-name of the ‘Skreenmaster-General’) and the impeachment in 1723 of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, for Jacobite plotting. Walpole’s exploitation of the latter, ‘the most successful political scare in the eighteenth century’ (G.V. Bennett, ‘Jacobitism and the rise of Walpole’, Historical Perspectives (1974), p. 71), ensured that the safety of the Protestant succession would remain high on the political agenda, and that all opposition activity was liable to be smeared with the charge of Jacobitism by ministerial propagandists.

THROUGH all the Employments of Life Each Neighbour abuses his Brother; Whore and Rogue, they call Husband and Wife: All Professions be-rogue one another. The Priest calls the Lawyer a cheat, The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine; And the Statesman, because he’s so great, Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.

John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), p. 1