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 reducing the interest on the national debt. With a view to this he had endeavoured to raise a loan of 600,000l. for the government at four per cent. But the moneyed interests took alarm. They abstained from subscribing, and after three days no more than 45,000l. had been raised (Parl. Hist. vii. 425, 8 March 1717). The new measure was for redeeming the debt, so far as it did not consist of irredeemable annuities, and reducing the interest from seven and eight to five per cent. The surplus arising out of the taxes appropriated to the interest at its existing rate would then constitute a fund for the discharge of the capital of the debt. This was the first general sinking fund (, iv. 534–6). A concurrent agreement was made with the bank of England and the South Sea Company by which the interest due to them from government was reduced from six to five per cent., and they agreed to advance 2,500,000l. and 2,000,000l. respectively for the purpose of paying off such fundholders as should decline to accept the reduction of their interest. ‘I believe,’ wrote Steele on 19 March, ‘the scheme will take place, and, if it does, Walpole must be a very great man’ (Corresp. ii. 423). While the measure was passing through the house a violent altercation arose between Stanhope and Walpole. Stanhope had long been smarting under the reproaches with which Walpole had visited his defection to Sunderland. Irritated at the necessity of confessing his incapacity to deal with the financial question, Stanhope attacked Walpole for bestowing a reversion to an office upon his son. Walpole retorted to the effect that it was better so disposed than on one of the king's foreign favourites to whom Sunderland and Stanhope had truckled. ‘One of the chief reasons,’ he added, referring to this, ‘that made me resign was because I could not connive at some things that were carrying on’ (Parl. Hist. vii. 460; 9 May 1717). Walpole entered into opposition with the declaration that he did not intend ‘to make the king uneasy or to embarrass his affairs’ (ib. vii. 449, 16 April 1717). This pledge he regarded as compatible with a harassing opposition to the king's ministers, between whom and his majesty he distinguished (ib. vii. 565). ‘The parties of Walpole and Stanhope,’ wrote Pope in June 1717, ‘are as violent as whig and tory’ (Works, ix. 383). So often did Walpole find himself in the same division lobby with Shippen [see ], the leader of the extreme tories, that Shippen caustically remarked that ‘he (Walpole) was no more afraid than himself of being called a Jacobite.’

In 1717 Walpole supported the tories in an unsuccessful attack upon Lord Cadogan [see ], commander-in-chief, one of the allies of Sunderland and Stanhope, who had been accused of embezzlement in connection with the transport of some Dutch auxiliaries. He echoed the tory outcry against a standing army, declared twelve thousand men an adequate force, and opposed, though he finally voted for, the mutiny bill of 1718. His tolerance upon religious matters has already been seen. In 1711 and 1714 he had warmly opposed the occasional conformity bill and the schism bill; yet in 1719 he resisted the repeal of this last act. He denounced (11 Nov. 1718) the quadruple alliance concluded on the previous 2 Aug. between the emperor, France, England, and subsequently the United Provinces, of which he was himself afterwards the advocate. He disapproved the attack by Byng upon the Spanish fleet, though this must be acknowledged to have been consistent with his own pacific temper. It was also characteristic of his incapacity to maintain resentment that he withdrew from the prosecution of the impeachment of Oxford. However factious his opposition may have seemed, the vigour of his attacks and the feebleness of ministers increased his influence in the House of Commons. His crowning opportunity came with the introduction of the peerage bill on 2 March 1718. The object of this measure was to limit the number of peers to 216, 191 from England and 25 from Scotland. It was really aimed at the Prince of Wales (George II), whom it would prevent from flooding the House of Lords with tory peers upon his father's death. It would, of course, have rendered the lords the dominant member of the constitution. Walpole found the whig peers not indisposed to the measure. He wrote a pamphlet against it with the title of ‘The Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House,’ &c. He stirred up the opposition of the more ambitious country gentlemen. He addressed a meeting of whig peers at Devonshire House in a speech which produced a complete revulsion of feeling. With them he made arrangements for an opposition to the bill when it reached the commons. On 8 Dec. in the House of Commons he demolished the proposal in ‘a very masterly speech,’ and secured its rejection by 269 to 177 votes.

In January 1720 the government began to entertain a scheme for the reduction of the irredeemable annuities which amounted