tampering with public justice or with personal liberty. Thought and action were alike left free. No Minister was ever more foully slandered by journalists and pamphleteers; but Walpole never meddled with the press. [Sidenote: Fresh efforts of Spain.] Abroad as well as at home the difficulties in the way of his policy were enormous. Peace was still hard to maintain. Defeated as her first attempt had been, Spain remained resolute to regain her lost provinces, to recover Gibraltar and Minorca, and to restore her old monopoly of trade with her American colonies. She had learned that she could do this only by breaking the alliance of the Four Powers, which left her isolated in Europe; and she saw at last a chance of breaking this league in the difficulties of the House of Austria. The Emperor Charles the Sixth was without a son. He had issued a Pragmatic Sanction by which he provided that his hereditary dominions should descend unbroken to his daughter, Maria Theresa, but no European state had as yet consented to guarantee her succession. Spain seized on this opportunity of detaching the Emperor from the Western powers. She promised to support the Pragmatic Sanction in return for a pledge on the part of Charles to aid in wresting Gibraltar and Minorca from England, and in securing to a Spanish prince the succession to Parma, Piacenza, and Tuscany. A grant of the highest trading privileges in her American dominions to a commercial company which the Emperor had established at Ostend, in defiance of the Treaty of Westphalia and the remonstrances of England and Holland, revealed this secret alliance; and there were fears of the adhesion of Russia, which still remained hostile to England through the quarrel with Hanover. The danger was met for a while by an alliance of England, France, and Prussia, in 1725; but the withdrawal of the last Power again gave courage to the confederates, and in 1727 the Spaniards besieged Gibraltar while Charles threatened an invasion of Holland. The moderation of Walpole alone averted a European war. While sending British squadrons to the Baltic, the Spanish coast, and America, he succeeded by diplomatic pressure in again forcing the Emperor to inaction; after weary negotiations Spain was brought in 1729 to sign the Treaty of Seville and to content herself with the promise of a succession of a Spanish prince to the Duchies of Parma and Tuscany; and the discontent of Charles the Sixth at this concession was allayed in 1731 by giving the guarantee of England to the Pragmatic Sanction. [Sidenote: George the Second.]