And again, in September, when it was decreed that unlicensed dealing in gin should cease, riots occurred, and more than mere rioting was intended, in the metropolis, about Michaelmas. On this occasion Sir Robert wrote to his brother:――‘I began to receive accounts from all quarters of the town that the Jacobites were busy and industrious, in endeavouring to stir up the common people and make an advantage of the universal clamour that prevailed among the populace at the expiration of their darling vice.’ The Jacobite idea was, according to the information received by Walpole, to make the populace drunk _gratis_ by unlimited supplies of gin from the distilleries, and then turning them loose in London to do such work as such inspiration was likely to suggest to them; but an efficient display of the constitutional forces was sufficient to preserve the peace of the metropolis. [Sidenote: _THE STAGE FETTERED._] The alleged abuse of the liberty of the press and of that of the stage was denounced, as all opposition to the Government was, as the work of Jacobites for the subversion ‘of our present happy establishment.’ The Government undoubtedly hoped, by suppressing the liberty of satire on the stage, to be enabled to go a step further, and to crush the liberty of comment in the press. Sir Robert made his own opportunity to ensure the success of his preliminary step. Mr. Giffard, of the theatre in Goodman’s Fields, waited on Sir Robert in 1737 with the MS. of a piece named ‘The Golden Rump,’ which had been sent to him, for performance, by the anonymous author. Its spirit was so licentiously manifested against the Ministry, and was so revolutionary in its speech, suggestions, and principles, that the prudent manager felt bound to place it at the discretion of the minister. Sir Robert put it in his pocket, went down to the House with it, and ultimately succeeded, by its means, in carrying the Licensing Act, by which the stage has been ever since fettered. The anonymous piece brought by Giffard was never acted, never printed, probably never seen by anyone except manager and minister; and the question remains,――Was it not written to order, to afford a plausible pretext for protecting the administration from all its antagonists? Chesterfield, in his speech in the Lords against the proposed Act, denounced it as a long stride towards the destruction of liberty itself. He declared that it would be made subservient to the politics and schemes of the Court only. In the same speech occurred the famous passage: ‘This Bill, my Lords, is not only an encroachment upon Liberty, but it is likewise an encroachment upon Property. Wit, my Lords, is a sort of property. It is the property of those who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is indeed but a precarious dependence. Thank God! we, my Lords, have a dependence of another kind.’ [Sidenote: _FEAR OF THE PRETENDER._]