[Illustration: Drop-A]t the time when to be discovered carrying on a treasonable correspondence with the Chevalier might cost a man his life, Walpole made such a discovery in the person of a friend of honest Shippen who, himself, kept up such correspondence, but was successful in keeping it concealed. Shippen went to the minister with an urgent entreaty not to bring down destruction on his friend. Mercy was a card it suited the minister to play; he granted the prayer of his great political opponent. But he suggested a stipulation. ‘I do not ask you,’ said Sir Robert, ‘to vote against your principles; but if questions should arise in the House, personal to myself, do not then forget what I have done for you to-day.’ A great personal question did arise,――this year. Lord Carteret in the Lords, and Mr. Sandys, with his long cravat of Queen Anne’s days, in the Commons, moved, on the same day and in precisely the same words, that the king should be requested to dismiss Walpole from his service and counsels for ever. The debate was hot in each House, and the object of the movers was unsuccessful in both. In the Commons, this incident occurred. The impetuous Jacobite Shippen rose to speak. He certainly astonished the House. The motion, he said, was merely made to put out one minister, and to put in another. For his part, he did not care who was in or who was out. He would not vote at all. Shippen walked out of the House, and he was followed by thirty-four friends who had yielded to his persuasions. He thus proved to Walpole the gratefulness of his memory. [Sidenote: _INCIDENTS IN PARLIAMENT._] This was not the only incident of the debate. Mr. Edward Harley, uncle of the Earl of Oxford, was one of the speakers. Walpole had borne hardly against the earl as an enemy to the Protestant Succession, for being which the peer had stood in some peril of his life, and had temporarily lost his liberty. Mr. Harley said, he would refrain from acting as unjustly to Walpole, (against whom there was no specific charge, only a general accusation, without any proofs,) as Walpole had acted against his nephew on mere suspicion;――and Mr. Harley walked out of the House, without voting. [Sidenote: _PARTY CHARACTERISTICS._]