That compact between France and Spain, to which the Two Sicilies acceded later, bore within it, in the then strained relations between England and Spain, the germ of the great wars between England and the House of Bourbon which issued in the creation of the British Empire and the independence of the United States.
The clamor in England over Spanish outrages continued, and was carefully nursed by the opposition to Walpole.

The minister was now over sixty years of age, and scarcely able to change the settled convictions and policy of his prime.

He was face to face with one of those irrepressible conflicts between nations and races toward which a policy of repression and compromise can be employed but for a short time.

The English were bent upon opening the West Indies and Spanish America, the Spanish government equally bent upon obstructing them.
Unfortunately for their policy of obstruction, they strengthened Walpole's enemies by unlawful search of English ships on the open sea, and possibly also by outrages to English seamen.

Some of the latter were brought before the bar of the House of Commons, and testified that they had been not merely plundered, but tortured, shut up in prison, and compelled to live and work under loathsome conditions.