Spencer Compton, who was then looked to as likely to be in power, having only offered £60,000. The Queen sent back word, "Tell Sir Robert the fat b———h has forgiven him," and thenceforth they were political allies until the Queen's death in 1737.

The domestic relations of George II. were marvellous. We pass with little notice Lady Suffolk, lady-in-waiting to the Queen and mistress to the King, who was sold by her husband for a pension of £12,000 a year, paid by the British tax-payers, and who was coarsely insulted by both their Majesties. It is needless to dwell on the confidential communications, in which "that strutting little sultan George II.," as Thackeray calls him, solicited favors from his wife for his mistress, the Countess of Walmoden; but to use the words of the cultured Edinburgh Review, the Queen's "actual intercession to secure for the King the favors of the Duchess of Modena precludes the idea that these sentiments were as revolting to the royal Philaminte as they would nowadays be to a scavenger's daughter. Nor was the Queen the only lady of the Royal Family who talked openly on these matters. When Lady Suffolk was waning at court, the Princess Royal could find nothing better to say than this: 'I wish with all my heart that he (i. e., the King) would take somebody else, that Mamma might be relieved from the ennui of seeing him forever in her room.'"

Lady Cowper in her diary tells us that George II., when Prince of Wales, intrigued with Lady Walpole, not only with the knowledge of the Princess Caroline, but also with connivance of the Prime Minister himself. Lord Hervey adds that Caroline used to sneer at Sir Robert Walpole, asking how the poor man—"avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflees et ce villain ventre"—could possibly believe that any woman could love him for himself. And that Sir Robert retaliated, when Caroline afterwards complained to him of the King's cross temper, by telling her very coolly that "it was impossible it could be otherwise, since the King had tasted better things," and ended by advising her to bring pretty Lady Tankerville en rapport with the King.

In 1727 an Act was passed, directed against workmen in the woollen trade, rendering combination for the purpose of raising wages unlawful. Some years afterwards, this Act was extended to other trades, and the whole tendency of the Septennial Parliament legislation manifests a most unfortunate desire on the part of the Legislature to coerce and keep in subjection the artisan classes.

In February, 1728, the celebrated "Beggar's Opera," by Gay, was put on the stage at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and, being supposed to contain some satirical reflections on court-corruption, provoked much displeasure on the part of Royalty. The Duchess of Queensborough, who patronized Gay, being forbidden to attend court, wrote thus: "The Duchess of Queensborough is surprised and well pleased that the King has given her so agreeable a command as forbidding her the court.... She hopes that, by so unprecedented an order as this, the King will see as few as she wishes at his court, particularly such as dare speak or think truth."

In 1729, £115,000 was voted by Parliament for the payment of the King's debts. This vote seems to have been obtained under false pretences, to benefit the King, whose "cardinal passion," says Phillimore, "was avarice."

The Craftsman during the first decade of the reign, fiercely assailed the Whig ministry for "a wasteful expenditure of money in foreign subsidies and bribes;" and in his place in the House of Commons William Pitt, "the great Commoner," in the strongest language attacked the system of foreign bribery by which home corruption was supplemented.

The rapidly increasing expenditure needed every day increased taxation, and a caricature published in 1732 marks the public feeling. A monster (Excise), in the form of a many-headed dragon, is drawing the minister (Sir Robert Walpole) in his coach, and pouring into his lap, in the shape of gold, what it has eaten up in the forms of mutton, hams, cups, glasses, mugs, pipes, etc.