"For twenty years Walpole had just held in check those aspirations natural to a society which was faced with enormous possibilities of commercial expansion, a society which had, too, the capacity to seize its chances and the wealth and men needed to exploit them. Walpole had avoided wars and kept the peace because he believed England existed for the sake of men of substance, who gained from security and low taxation, and not for the sake of rash commercial adventurers... England has never known a prime minister more adroit in handling men than Walpole, but he was too rooted in reality, too sensitive to the everyday world to be a great statesman."
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PrisonersPrime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandChancellors of the ExchequerWhig (British political party) politicians
Original Language: English
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Sources
J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (1950; 1964), pp. 72-73
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Walpole
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Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman and Whig politician who is generally regarded as the de facto first prime minister of Great Britain.
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