h still
true to her cause, advised her to purchase Frederick's aid against
France and her allies by the cession of part of Silesia. The counsel was
wise, for Frederick in hope of some such turn of events had as yet held
aloof from actual alliance with France, but the Patriots spurred the
Queen to refusal by promising her England's aid in the recovery of her
full inheritance. Walpole's last hope of rescuing Austria was broken by
this resolve; and Frederick was driven to conclude the alliance with
France from which he had so stubbornly held aloof. But the Queen refused
to despair. She won the support of Hungary by restoring its
constitutional rights; and British subsidies enabled her to march at the
head of a Hungarian army to the rescue of Vienna, to overrun Bavaria,
and repulse an attack of Frederick on Moravia in the spring of 1742. On
England's part, however, the war was waged feebly and ineffectively.
Admiral Vernon was beaten before Carthagena; and Walpole was charged
with thwarting and starving his operations. With the same injustice, the
selfishness with which George the Second hurried to Hanover, and in his
dread of harm to his hereditary state averted the entry of a French
army by binding himself as Elector to neutrality in the war, though the
step had been taken without Walpole's knowledge, was laid to the
minister's charge. His power indeed was ebbing every day. He still
repelled the attacks of the "Patriots" with wonderful spirit; but in a
new Parliament which was called at this crisis his majority dropped to
sixteen, and in his own Cabinet he became almost powerless. The buoyant
temper which had carried him through so many storms broke down at last.
"He who was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow," writes his
son, "now never sleeps above an hour without waking: and he who at
dinner always forgot his own anxieties, and was more gay and thoughtless
than all the company, now sits without speaking and with his eyes fixed
for an hour together." The end was in fact near; and in the opening of
1742 the dwindling of his majority to three forced Walpole to resign.

[Sidenote: Carteret.]

His fall however made no change in English policy, at home or abroad.
The bulk of his ministry had opposed him in his later years of office,
and at his retirement they resumed their posts, simply admitting some of
the more prominent members of opposition, and giving the control of
foreign affairs to Lord Carteret, a man of