Thus did Caroline and Walpole rule England. The means whereby they ruled were tainted at the source; the end may, or may not, have justified the means, but at this distance of time, when the fierce controversies which gathered around Walpole’s policy have passed into history, it must be admitted that the results were good. England was sick unto death of internal and external strife, what she needed was a strong hand at the helm and a settled government, and under Caroline and Walpole she secured both, and ten years of peace abroad and plenty at home in addition. This long peace enabled England to recover herself within her borders; British credit, which had sunk to zero, rose higher than it had been for years, trade and commerce increased, land went up in value, wheat became cheaper, and everywhere signs of prosperity were manifest. By degrees, and it was here that Caroline’s tact came in, the different classes of the community were reconciled to the Hanoverian dynasty; the Church and the country squires held out the longest, but though they retained a tender sentiment for the exiled Stuarts they came in some vague way to connect their material prosperity with the maintenance of the Hanoverian _régime_. This result was not achieved without some loss, chiefly to be found in the lowering of the old ideals. The clergy, from causes on which we shall dwell more fully later, became indifferent, and the Church sank into apathy; the country gentry lost, together with their old passionate loyalty to the King, some of their sense of personal responsibility towards their poorer neighbours, and took a lower view of their duties to the State. Much of the grossness and selfishness which disfigured the eighteenth century was due to an excess of material prosperity, and a consequent lowering of ideals in our national life. Very soon the King, who when Prince of Wales had always posed as English in all his sentiments, began his father’s game of sacrificing English interests to those of Hanover. So subservient was the new House of Commons, and so unscrupulous were Walpole’s tactics, that only eighty-four members were found to vote against a proposal to pay £280,000 to maintain Hessian troops for the benefit of Hanover; and the subsidy of £25,000 a year for four years to the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, in return for his promise to furnish troops for a similar purpose, was passed with very little opposition. The maintenance of the Hessian troops was part of the price Walpole had to pay the King for preferring him to Compton, and the Duke of Wolfenbüttel’s subsidy was hush-money pure and simple, paid for his handing over the late King’s will.