In saying, however, that the power had passed to the House of Commons, we must be careful not to regard the House of Commons as a popular assembly. The next phase of our history, the complement to that part of the Revolution which we have now passed, is the struggle of the people to get possession of their own House. At the time of which we are speaking the House of Commons was so filled with nominees of great lords, the electoral body was so limited, and the distribution of seats so arbitrary, that the House of Commons could in no way be regarded as a fair representation of the people, and the great Whig majority rested not on the liberal feeling of the nation, but upon an oligarchy of great Whig nobles. In his foreign policy Walpole was influenced by similar principles. Though the Peace of Utrecht was a Tory peace, its maintenance, and that of the balance of power it had established, was his chief object. Anything was better than that England should be engaged in war. War at once opened the door for Jacobite hopes. War at once touched that material prosperity which was to be the surest claim of gratitude to the reigning house. Moreover, as a financier, Walpole hated war. It was in this capacity, if we set aside his general ability and skill in management, that Walpole was greatest. We have seen how prudently he re-established credit after the bursting of the South Sea bubble, and how wise was his plan in his ill-fated Excise Bill. If some of his measures (as the Salt Tax) were dictated by political rather than economical necessities, it is yet certain that he inspired universal confidence, and owed much of his power to the support of the moneyed interest. His personal character, like that of most of his contemporaries, was not good. A large, coarse-looking person did not belie the coarseness of his tastes. He drank freely, joked coarsely, and had more than one natural child. Although in one of his speeches he plumes himself on having never been charged with corruption, his private fortune was certainly much increased by his ministry, and if we except his collection of pictures at Houghton, there is no sign that he had any appreciation of literature or of the arts. His ignorance of literature, and his contempt for it, is indeed notorious. He spent vast sums of money in purchasing the services of pamphleteers; scarcely one of them was worth anything. He seems to have regarded writing like any other trade, as being capable of being purchased by the piece. Patronage to literary men he systematically refused; we therefore find all the able writers of the time ranged on the side of the Opposition; and it is for the same reason perhaps that the worst points of his character are those which are more commonly known. [Sidenote: The new ministry under Wilmington.]