THE ERA OF STAGNATION I With the accession of George I, there ensued an era of unexampled calm in English politics, which lasted until the expulsion of Walpole from power in 1742.

No vital questions were debated, nor did problems of principle force themselves into view; and if the Jacobites remained in the background as an element invincibly hostile to absorption, the failure of their effort in 1715 showed how feeble was their hold on English opinion.

Not, indeed, that the new dynasty was popular.

It had nothing of that romantic glamour of a lost cause so imperishably recorded in Scott's pages.

The first Georges were heavy and foreign and meagre-souled; but at least they were Protestant, and, until the reign of George III, they were amenable to management.