With the accession of George I, there ensued an era of unexampled calm
in English politics, which lasted until the expulsion of Walpole from
power in 1742. No vital questions were debated, nor did problems of
principle force themselves into view; and if the Jacobites remained in
the background as an element invincibly hostile to absorption, the
failure of their effort in 1715 showed how feeble was their hold on
English opinion. Not, indeed, that the new dynasty was popular. It had
nothing of that romantic glamour of a lost cause so imperishably
recorded in Scott's pages. The first Georges were heavy and foreign and
meagre-souled; but at least they were Protestant, and, until the reign
of George III, they were amenable to management. In the result, an
opposition in the classic sense was hardly needed; for the only question
to be considered was the personalities who were to share in power. The
dominating temper of Walpole decided that issue; and he gave thereby to
the political struggle the outlines in which it was encased for a
generation.

It is a dull period, but complacent; for it was not an unprosperous
time. Agriculture and commerce both were abundant; and the increasing
development of towns shows us that the Industrial Revolution loomed in
the near distance. The eager continuance of the deistic controversy
suggests that there was something of novelty beneath the calm; for
Tindal and Woolston and Chubb struck at the root of religious belief,
and Shaftesbury's exaltation of Hellenism not only contributed to the
_Aufklarung_ in Scotland, but suggested that Christian ideals were not
to go unchallenged. But the literature of the time is summarized in
Pope; and the easy neatness of his verses is quaintly representative of
the Georgian peace. Defoe and Swift had both done their work; and the
latter had withdrawn to Ireland to die like a rat in a hole. Bishop
Berkeley, indeed, was convinced of the decadence of England; but his