Government, with a Secretary of State for one part of the kingdom who, they are assured, acts counter to all their measures, or at least whom they cannot confide in." His remonstrance had to be pressed again and again upon Townshend before anything was done to satisfy him. Walpole, however, was a man to press where he thought the occasion demanded it, and he was successful in the end. The Duke of Roxburgh had to resign, and Walpole added to his own duties those of the Secretary of State for Scotland. He appointed, however, as his agent or deputy in the administration of Scotland, the Earl of Isla, Lord-keeper of the Privy Seal in that country, and a man on whose allegiance he could entirely rely. Having {251} thus secured a full power to act, Walpole was not long in bringing the disturbances to an end. He displayed both discretion and resolve. He was able to satisfy the most reasonable among the brewers and maltsters that their interests would not really suffer by the proposed resolutions. The natural result was that the combination of brewers began to melt away. The brewers held a meeting, and it was soon found that it would not be possible to secure a general resolution to meet the legislation of the Government by passive resistance and by ceasing to brew. As all would not stand together, every man was left to take his own course, and the result was that what we should now call a strike came quietly to an end. [Sidenote: 1725--Intrigue and counter-intrigue] A modern reader is naturally shocked and surprised at the manner in which members of the same Government in Walpole's day intrigued against one another, and strove to thwart each other's policy. No actual defence is to be made for such a practice; but it is only fair to observe that up to Walpole's own entrance into office, and after it, the habit of English sovereigns had been to make up an administration by taking members of different and even of opposing parties and bringing them together, in the hope of securing thereby the co-operation of all parties. Under these circumstances it was natural, it was only to be expected, that the minister who was pledged to one policy would endeavor by all means in his power to counteract the designs of the minister whom he knew to be pledged to a very different kind of policy. Nor, indeed, is the practice of intrigue and counter-intrigue among members of the same cabinet actually unknown in our own days, when there is not the same excuse to be pleaded for it that might have been urged in the time of Walpole. In the case of the Duke of Roxburgh, however, the attempt to counteract the policy of Walpole was made in somewhat bolder and less subtle fashion than was common even in those days, and Walpole was well justified in the course he took. For once his high-handed way of dealing with men was vindicated {252} by its principle and by the unqualified advantage it brought to the interests of the State and to those of the minister as well.