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 favour. An admiring crowd followed him when he went to Ranelagh (, Letters, 29 July 1742, i. 193). The secret committee was still at work, but its failures had set its members quarrelling, and before the summer was over it was ‘already forgotten’ (Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, Letters, i. 189). Its second report was presented on 30 June. Its charges were threefold: the exercise of undue influence in elections, the grant of fraudulent contracts, and peculation and profusion in the expenditure of secret-service money. The proofs of the first were of a trifling character concerning the promotion of officials and the displacement of revenue officers in the borough of Weymouth; those of the second were confined to one contract for furnishing money in Jamaica, in which the contractors gained a fraction over fourteen per cent., no very undue sum considering the risks run. The case against him was therefore felt to rest on the secret-service expenditure. Of peculation there was no evidence whatever. Profusion was established by the comparison of a carefully selected decade, 1707–17, during which the secret-service money expended was no more than 338,000l., with the decade 1731–41, when it amounted to 1,440,000l. Even this result was only obtained by garbling the figures of the first decade. The account fairly taken shows that the expenditure by Walpole on secret service was about 79,000l. a year; much less, according to Coxe, than the annual expenditure before the revolution. That much of this money was well laid out we know, for Walpole was better furnished with information from the continent than any of his predecessors. It was admitted that 5,000l. a year was used to subsidise ministerial newspapers. There cannot be much question that votes had from time to time been secured by direct payments instead of by places and pensions (see, Memoirs, iii. 93, 130; , Diary, 15 March 1754). It was a system which Walpole had inherited from Sunderland, whom Onslow marks out as the corruptor of parliament (Onslow MSS. p. 509). Such indications as we have justify Burke in his statement that ‘the charge of systematic corruption is less applicable to Walpole, perhaps, than to any minister who ever served the crown for so great a length of time’ (‘Appeal from New to Old Whigs,’ Works, iv. 436). The fact that there were very few whom he gained over from the opposition is, as Burke suggests, evidence of this.

The inquiry had proved a signal failure. The ‘cant’ of corruption, as Burke calls it, had done its work, and the satisfied placemen with whom Walpole was personally on friendly terms (Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, 15 Nov. 1742, Letters, i. 214) had no desire to prosecute the matter further. But the weapon which had done such good service against the last ministry could now be employed to embarrass the new one. On 1 Dec. Lyttelton moved for another secret committee of inquiry (Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, 2 Dec. 1742, Letters, i. 216), and was supported by Pitt, but defeated by 253 to 186 votes. In 1741 the old Duchess of Marlborough had predicted that in the event of a change of ministry ‘Sir Robert will still sit behind the curtain’ (Corresp. ii. 224). During Carteret's administration the king constantly consulted Orford through intermediaries. He gave places to Cholmondeley, his son-in-law, and Henry Fox and Pelham, his adherents. Orford, on the other hand, successfully exerted his influence with his party to support the retention of the Hanoverian troops (, Letters, i. 286), though he was himself too ill to attend the debate in the lords (31 Jan. 1744). His time was chiefly spent at Houghton, whence on 24 June 1743 he wrote a pathetic letter expressing his solace in rural pleasures (the letter is printed by, i. 762 n.; , Life of Hardwicke, ii. 133). He appears to have spoken in the House of Lords on only one occasion, 24 Feb. 1744, when he spontaneously moved an address to the king upon the presentation of papers conveying intelligence of an apprehended invasion by the French on behalf of the pretender. He made, says Horace Walpole, a ‘long and fine speech,’ which led to a reconciliation with the Prince of Wales. Though ostensibly in retirement, it cannot be doubted that he was at first watching an opportunity, should his health be restored, for resuming office. He had conceived a plan for the recovery of his popularity by a proposal to separate Hanover from England (, ii. 571). Throughout 1743 and 1744 he paid the closest attention to affairs, and was the constant adviser of Pelham. His efforts were directed to thwarting Carteret's war policy, and preventing the introduction by him of the tory party into the government. ‘Whig it,’ he wrote to Pelham on 25 Aug. 1743, ‘with all opponents that will parley, but 'ware tory.’ When he was in London his house in Arlington Street was crowded with callers. But, as time went on, the exhaustion arising from his disease grew upon him. On 29 May 1744 Horace Walpole writes of him as ‘grown quite indolent,’ having abandoned