CHAPTER V

SIGNS OF CHANGE



I


From Hume until the publication of Burke's _Present Discontents_ (1770)
there is no work on English politics of the first importance. Walpole
had fallen in 1742; but for the next fifteen years his methods dominated
the parliamentary scene. It was only with the advent of the elder Pitt
to power that a new temper may be observed, a temper quickened by what
followed on the accession of George III. Henceforward, it is not untrue
to say that the early complacency of the time was lost; or, at least, it
was no longer in the ascendant again until the excesses of the French
Revolution enabled Burke to persuade his countrymen into that grim
satisfaction with their own achievement of which Lord Eldon is the
standing model. The signs of change are in each instance slight, though
collectively they acquire significance. It was difficult for men to
grumble where, as under Walpole, each harvest brought them greater
prosperity, or where, as under Chatham, they leaped from victory to
victory. Something of the exhilaration of these years we can still catch
in the letters which show the effort made by the jaded Horace Walpole to
turn off with easy laughter his deep sense of pride. In the House of
Commons, indeed, there is nothing, until the Wilkes case, to show that a