_Decline of the Jacobites._--No extensive conspiracy of the jacobite faction seems ever to have been in agitation after the fall of Atterbury. The Pretender had his emissaries perpetually alert; and it is understood that an enormous mass of letters from his English friends is in existence;[363] but very few had the courage, or rather folly, to plunge into so desperate a course as rebellion. Walpole's prudent and vigilant administration, without transgressing the boundaries of that free constitution for which alone the house of Brunswick had been preferred, kept in check the disaffected. He wisely sought the friendship of Cardinal Fleury, aware that no other power in Europe than France could effectually assist the banished family. After his own fall and the death of Fleury, new combinations of foreign policy arose; his successors returned to the Austrian connection; a war with France broke out; the grandson of James II. became master, for a moment, of Scotland, and even advanced to the centre of this peaceful and unprotected kingdom. But this was hardly more ignominious to the government than to the jacobites themselves; none of them joined the standard of their pretended sovereign; and the rebellion of 1745 was conclusive, by its own temporary success, against the possibility of his restoration.[364] From this time the government, even when in search of pretexts for alarm, could hardly affect to dread a name grown so contemptible as that of the Stuart party. It survived however for the rest of the reign of George II. in those magnanimous compotations, which had always been the best evidence of its courage and fidelity.