Pitt soon had an opportunity of showing that the selection of ministers from the Prince's household had left out the one priceless force. For now there came raining into Parliament imperative demands for the impeachment of the fallen Minister. These representations from the various constituencies to their several members are well worth consideration, for they emphasise identical demands with a unanimity suggestive of much later forms of political organization. They denounce Standing Armies, and Septennial Parliaments, asking that Triennial Parliaments, 'at least,' may be restored; they require that placemen largely, and pensioners entirely, shall be excluded from the House of Commons; and that laws shall be passed for the security and encouragement of the linen trade. In an even more sanguine spirit they stipulate for the extirpation of those party distractions 'which, though their foundations have long ceased to exist, were yet so industriously fomented among us, in order to serve the mischievous purposes of a ministerial tyranny.' But first and last, and above all, they insist on the punishment of Walpole, bringing him and his colleagues, which of course meant him, to 'condign punishment.' 'Nothing but the most rigorous justice ought to avenge an injured people ... justice is a duty we owe to posterity.' 'We have a right to speak plainly to you, and we must tell you, Sir, that if the man that ruined our trade, disgraced our arms, plundered our treasure, negotiated away our interests, impoverished the land--in a word, the author of all the disgraces and calamities of twenty years should (while the whole nation is calling out for justice against him) triumph in impunity, we shall be apt to think our constitution is lost.' 'Lenity to him would be cruelty to the nation.'[137] Our ancestors, it will be seen, did not wage their political warfare with the sweetmeats or roses of a carnival contest.
It seems unnecessary to remark that of these various injunctions the only one to which the members of Parliament paid any heed was that for the prosecution or persecution of Walpole. Even here there was no result. The new officials were sated and at ease, the hungry remnant was insufficient or inept. But the constituencies were in deadly earnest, if their members were not. They had been goaded by their leaders to a state bordering on frenzy, and their demands, vindictive as they may appear to us, only embodied the declamation of the Opposition throughout half at least of Walpole's ministry. More than ten years before, Pulteney had publicly declared that 'the Opposition had come to a determined resolution not to listen to any treaty whatsoever, or from whomsoever it may come, in which the first and principal condition should not be to deliver him (Walpole) up to the justice of the country.' But now the Opposition was in power, and Pulteney was in a chastened and moderate mood. His star, indeed, was already on the wane; he was on the high road to the earldom of Bath and extinction. At the first meeting indeed with the King's envoys he had declared in a famous phrase that he could not screen Walpole if he would, for 'the heads of parties are like the heads of snakes, which are carried on by their tails.' But at a later conference he said, with reference to the same topic, that he was not a man of blood, and that in all his expressions importing a resolution to pursue the Minister to destruction he meant only the destruction of his power, not his person. He would consult with his friends, yet must confess that so many years of maladministration deserved some parliamentary censure.