In 1795 Walpole went with the 13th Light Dragoons to the West Indies, and took a leading part in the suppression of an insurrection by Maroons in Jamaica. The Maroons of Cudjoe's Town, who had risen in what became known as the Second Maroon War, numbered fewer than seven hundred, but they had been joined by about four hundred runaway slaves, and the insurrection threatened to spread. The country was extremely difficult for regular troops, and two of the detachments sent against the Jamaican Maroons fell into ambushes, and their commanders in September 1795, and the Accompong Maroons trained them in the art of tracking in the forested regions of the Cockpit Country. However, the Maroons of Trelawny Town were unable to maintain their guerrilla campaign during the drought months, and when Walpole employed a scorched-earth policy, backed up by the importation of hunting dogs, on 22 December Walpole was able to persuade the Trelawny Maroon leader, Montague James, to come to terms. They were to ask pardon, to leave their fastnesses and settle in any district assigned to them, and to give up the runaway slaves. However, the Maroons did not betray their runaway slave allies, and hundreds of them gained their freedom as a result. On these conditions he promised that they should not be sent out of the island; and the terms were ratified by the governor. Only a few of the insurgents came in, and in the middle of January Walpole moved against them with a strong column, accompanied by dogs which had been brought from Cuba. They then surrendered, and were sent down to Montego Bay; and in March the assembly and the governor decided to ship them to Nova Scotia. Walpole strongly remonstrated against what he regarded as a breach of faith. He argued that the treaty might have been cancelled when the maroons failed to fulfil its terms, but that the governor had deliberately abstained from cancelling it. He declined a gift of five hundred guineas which the assembly voted for the purchase of a sword, and obtained leave to return to England. His letter declining the sword was expunged from the minutes of the house. He was made colonel in the British Army on 3 May 1796, but retired from the service before 1799.
Political career
In January 1797 Walpole was returned to Parliament for Derby, which he represented till 1806. Walpole maintained contact with the Trelawny Maroons while they were in Nova Scotia, arguing in vain in parliament that they were unfairly treated by Balcarres. When Montague James complained of poor living conditions in Nova Scotia, he sent one of his junior Maroon officers, Charles Samuels to England, bearing letters from the Maroon colonel. He was a follower of Charles James Fox, and voted for reform. He was George Tierney's second in his duel with Pitt on Putney Heath on 27 May 1798. When Fox came into office as Foreign Secretary, Walpole was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ; but he did not retain this office long after Fox's death. He was made comptroller of cash in the excise office for the rest of his life. He was MP for Dungarvan from 1807 till 1820, when he resigned his seat. Walpole spoke against the slave trade in the House of Commons in 1807, during the Slave Trade Act 1807 approval. Relying on his knowledge of the Maroon resistance, he supported the argument that the increasing number of Africans in the colony would inevitably result in revolts and even revolutions like the, then recent, Haitian Revolution.
