Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/464

450 them forth. Walpole's speech on this day has justly been deemed his masterpiece. He divided his assailants into three classes—tories, disaffected whigs, styling themselves patriots, and boys. Passing lightly over the tories, he fell with all his trenchant bitterness on the so-called



patriots. He declared that they were patriots, not from any real patriotic feeling, but solely from disappointment and discontent. They did not want any change of masters, but merely of men; they wanted merely to occupy the places of those in power. Their principles being the same, why, unless this were the case, did they not coalesce, and support those principles? Why swell the ranks of the enemies of their own principles? Did not a whig administration naturally deserve the support of the whigs, as a tory administration demanded the support of tories?

On this point Walpole was unassailable—he struck his enemies in their weak place; but when he inquired why they combined against one man, though of their own principles, his ground gave way beneath him. They accused him of corruption, he said, and he denied it, and appealed