War & Peace Quote by Robert Walpole

Walpole is performing a neat trick of early modern crisis management: he repeats his enemies accusations in full, then labels them a "delusion" as if the only sane response is to snap out of it. The sentence is built like a prosecutor's indictment, but its aim is defensive. By piling up charges - the army "annually established", the "sole disposal" of offices and honors, power wielded against "liberty" and "commerce" - he momentarily inhabits the caricature of a minister as soft tyrant. Then he pivots to paternal authority: let me awaken you. The implied message is not just "I'm innocent", but "I am the adult in the room."

The context matters: Britain after the Glorious Revolution was obsessed with the danger of standing armies, court patronage, and executive creep. Walpole, effectively the first modern prime minister, had mastered parliamentary management through appointments and favors, which made him both powerful and easy to suspect. His opponents could cast "influence" as corruption and corruption as constitutional rot. Walpole answers by reframing suspicion itself as political pathology, a fever dream whipped up by faction.

Subtext: he is conceding the structure even while denying the intent. He may not "destroy liberty", but yes, the government runs on posts, honors, and controlled majorities. That is why the line works rhetorically: it invites moderates to feel savvy - of course he's not a tyrant - while quietly normalizing the machinery of patronage as the price of stability. The "awakening" is also a warning: keep believing the worst, and you risk unmaking the very order that protects trade and Parliament.