On the two last named occasions Walpole's opposition had been useless. On the more important question of the limitation of the power of the Crown to create Peers by the Peerage Bill, he fortunately proved too strong for the minister. Like the Septennial Act, the Peerage Bill was introduced partly on theoretical, partly on party grounds. The Revolution had been an aristocratic rather than a popular movement. The power or rather the influence of the Crown had not been destroyed, but was in abeyance, the Hanoverian monarchs being as it were in a state of tutelage to the Whig party, whose strength was in the Upper House. Popular in language, but aristocratic in feeling, this party regarded political liberty as best secured by its own predominance, rendered permanent by such institutions as a Septennial Parliament and an exclusive hereditary nobility. It feared alike the power of the King and the power of the people, and already the adoption of the Treaty of Utrecht, carried by the popular will and by a large creation of Peers, had shown the possibility of a union between King and people which might sooner or later destroy its influence. To guard against such a danger was the primary object for which Stanhope introduced his Peerage Bill. But temporary party interests had as much weight with him as general theory. Stanhope and his friends, especially Sunderland, were in dread of the conduct which might be pursued by the Prince of Wales when he came to the throne. He was on bad terms with his father, and regarded Sunderland as the chief cause of the royal jealousy. It was generally believed that his accession would be followed by a creation of peers from among his own favourites. Thus both on public and party grounds the ministry thought it desirable to limit the royal prerogative. As was natural, the Tories, in their dislike to restrictions on the royal prerogative, and the party of Walpole, who opposed it because it was a Government measure, made common cause against the Bill. By its enactments the Crown was to be restrained from the creation of more than six beyond the existing number of 178 English peerages (the power of creating a new peerage whenever an old one became extinct being reserved), no new peerage was to be created with remainders except to the original recipient and his heirs male; while, to place the Peerage of Scotland on the same footing, the sixteen representative Peers of that country were to give way to twenty-five hereditary Peers nominated by the Crown. The Bill met with little opposition in the House of Lords, but was thrown out by a large majority in the Lower House, where Walpole pointed out "that one of the most powerful incentives to virtue would be taken away, since there would be no arriving at honour but through the winding-sheet of a decrepit lord, or the grave of an extinct noble family." [Sidenote: Strength of the ministry.]