Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/145

 the Jacobites in England were compelled to surrender at Preston in Lancashire. The Pretender landed after the rebellion was over and, finding his cause was lost, returned to France with the Earl of Mar. Several persons were put to death after this rising, among whom was the Earl of Derwentwater, a leader of the Jacobites in the north of England.

The rebellion led to an important change in the time a Parliament can last. The Whigs were afraid that if an election took place at this time they might be defeated, and they changed the law so that a Parliament could remain in existence seven years instead of three; and the Septennial Act, as the new measure was called, has remained law to the present. The worst feature of this change was that the Parliament which made it continued to sit for the new term, although it was elected for but three years.

In 1715 Louis XIV. died, and was succeeded by his great-grand-son Louis XV. The new king was a mere lad, and the Duke of Orleans acted as Regent. Orleans was friendly to England, and when Spain tried, in 1718, to recover a portion of her lost territory in Italy, France and England united to force her to keep the peace.

3. South Sea Bubble.—The National Debt had now grown so large that Aislabie, the Treasurer, proposed to Parliament a scheme for its easy payment. This was to accept the offer of the South Sea Company, which promised, if given the sole right of trading with South America in slaves and other commodities, to pay off a large share of the public debt. When the proposal was made the Bank of England also made an offer, and then the two companies began to bid against each other, until, at last, the South Sea Company offered to give £7,500,000 to the Government, in addition to what it had first proposed. The offer was accepted in 1720, in spite of the warnings of Robert Walpole, a rough but shrewd Norfolk squire, who showed clearly that the Company could not carry out its agreement. No sooner was the scheme adopted than every person who had any money to invest rushed to buy the shares of the Company. In a short time shares rose from £100 to £1000; and then almost as quickly the public lost confidence in the Company, and the anxiety to sell caused the shares to fall in price until they were nearly worthless. Thousands of people of all classes were ruined, and public wrath was turned against the