concern at

ministers.

The king had watched this struggle with great anxiety, as one personal to himself. Writing to Lord North The king's on the 17th March, after the motion of Sir J. the fate of his Rous, he said: "I am resolved not to throw myself into the hands of the Opposition at all events; and shall certainly, if things go as they seem to tend, know what my conscience as well as honor dictates, as the only way left for me." He even desired the royal yacht to be prepared, and talked as if nothing were now left for him but to retire to Hanover.2 But it had become impossible to retain any longer in his service that "confidential minister," whom he had "always treated more as his friend than minister."3 By the earnest solicitations of the king, Lord North had been induced to retain office against his own wishes: he had persisted in a policy of which he disapproved; and when forced to abandon it, he still held his ground, in order to protect the king from the intrusion of those whom his Majesty regarded as personal enemies.5 He was now fairly driven from his post, and the king appreciating the personal devotion of his minister, rewarded his zeal and fidelity with a munificent present from the privy purse.

The king's correspondence with Lord North gives us a remarkable insight into the relations of his Majesty with that minister, and with the government of the country. Not only did he direct the minister in all important matters of

1 Fox Mem., i. 288; King's Letters to Lord North.

2 Fox Mem., i. 287 (Lord Holland's text).

8 King to Lord North, 2d June, 1778.

4 King's Letters to Lord North, 31st Jan., 17th, 22d, 23d, 29th and 30th March, 8th April, May 6th, 29th, &c., 1778; 30th Nov., 1779; 19th May, 1780; 19th March, 1782.

5 On the 19th March, 1782, the very day before he announced his intention to resign, the king wrote: "If you resign before I have decided what to do, you will certainly forever forfeit my regard."

6 The king, in his letter to Lord North, says: "Allow me to assist you with 10,000l., 15,000l., or even 20,000l., if that will be sufficient." - Lord Brougham's Life of George III.; Works, iii. 18. Mr. Adolphus states, from private information, that the present amounted to 30,000%.

7 Appendix to Lord Brougham's Life of Lord North; Works, iii. 67.

The king's in

foreign and domestic policy; but he instructed him as to the management of debates in Parliament, suggested fluence dur- what motions should be made or opposed, and ing Lord North's min- how measures should be carried. He reserved to istry. himself all the patronage,―he arranged the entire cast of the administration, settled the relative places and pretensions of ministers of state, of law officers, and members of his household, -nominated and promoted the English and Scotch judges, appointed and translated bishops, nominated deans, and dispensed other preferments in the Church.1 He disposed of military governments, regiments, and commissions; and himself ordered the marching of troops. gave or refused titles, honors, and pensions. All his directions were peremptory: Louis the Great himself could not have been more royal:- he enjoyed the consciousness of power, and felt himself "every inch a king."

He

But what had been the result of twenty years of kingResults of the craft? Whenever the king's personal influence king's policy. had been the greatest, there had been the fiercest turbulence and discontent amongst the people, the most signal failures in the measures of the Government, and the heaviest disasters to the State. Of all the evil days of England during this king's long reign, the worst are recollected in the ministries of Lord Bute, Mr. Grenville, the Duke of Grafton, and Lord North. Nor had the royal will, however potential with ministers, prevailed in the government of the country. He had been thwarted and humbled by his parliaments, and insulted by demagogues: parliamentary privilege, which he had sought to uphold as boldly as his own prerogative, had been defied and overcome by Wilkes and the printers: the liberty of the press, which he would

1 Much to his credit, he secured the appointment of the poet Gray to the professorship of Modern History at Cambridge, 8th March, 1771.

2 25th October, 1775: "On the receipt of your letter, I have ordered Elliott's dragoons to march from Henley to Hounslow."

8" We must husband honors," wrote the king to Lord North on the 18th July, 1777, on refusing to make Sir W. Hamilton a privy-councillor.

have restrained, had been provoked into licentiousness; and his kingdom had been shorn of some of its fairest provinces.

"2

1782.

On the retirement of Lord North, the king submitted, with a bad grace, to the Rockingham administra- Rockingham tion. He found places, indeed, for his own ministry, friends but the policy of the cabinet was as distasteful to him as were the persons of some of the statesmen of whom it was composed. Its first principle was the concession of independence to America, which he had so long resisted; the second was the reduction of the influence of the Crown, by the abolition of offices, the exclusion of contractors from Parliament, and the disfranchisement of revenue officers.1 Shortly after its formation, Mr. Fox, writing to Mr. Fitzpatrick (28th April, 1782), said: "Provided we can stay in long enough to give a good stout blow to the influence of the Crown, I do not think it much signifies how soon we go out after." " This ministry was constituted of materials not likely to unite, - of men who had supported the late ministry, and of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition, or, as Mr. Fox expressed it, "it consisted of two parts, one belonging to the king, the other to the public." Such men could not be expected to act cordially together; but they aimed their blow at the influence of the Crown by passing the Contractors' Bill, the Revenue Officers' Bill, and a bill for the reduction of offices. They also suffered the former policy of the court to be stigmatized, by expunging from the journals of the House of Commons, the obnoxious resolutions which had affirmed the disability of Wilkes. A ministry promoting such measures as these, was naturally viewed with distrust and ill-will by the court. So hard was the struggle between them, that the surly Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, - who had retained his office by the express desire of the king, and voted against all the measures of the government,

1 Rockingham Mem., i. 452.

2 Fox Mem., i. 317.

8 Fox Mem., i. 292.

4 See Chapter VI.

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-af

firmed that Lord Rockingham was "bringing things to a pass where either his head or the king's must go, in order to settle which of them is to govern the country." The king was described by his Tory friends as a prisoner in the hands of his ministers, and represented in the caricatures of the day, as being put in fetters by his jailers. In the same spirit the ministers were termed the "Regency," as if they had assumed to exercise the royal authority. In a few months, however, this ministry was on the point of breaking up, in consequence of differences of opinion and personal jealousies, when the death of Lord Rockingham dissolved

it.

Lord Shelburne's ministry. 1st July, 1782.

66

Mr. Fox and his friends retired, and Lord Shelburne, who had represented the king in the late cabinet, was placed at the head of the new administration; while Mr. William Pitt now first entered office, though little more than twenty-three years of age, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The secession of the popular party restored the king's confidence in his ministers, who now attempted to govern by his influence, and to maintain their position against a formidable combination of parties. Horace Walpole represents Lord Shelburne as trusting to maintain himself entirely by the king; "4 and such was the state of parties that, in truth, he had little else to rely upon. In avowing this influence, he artfully defended it, in the spirit of the king's friends, by retorting upon the great Whig families. He would never consent, he said, "that the King of England should be a King of the Mahrattas; for among the Mahrattas the custom is, it seems, for a certain number of great lords to elect a Peishwah, who is thus the creature of the aristocracy, and is vested with the plenitude of power, while their king is, in fact, nothing more than a royal pageant." 5

1 Fox Mem., i. 294.

2 Rockingham Mem., ii. 466.

8 Tomline's Life of Pitt, i. 86.

4 Fox Mem., ii. 11.

6 Parl. Hist., xxii. 1003.

-

By breaking up parties, the king had hoped to secure his independence and to enlarge his influence; but Combination of parties now he was startled by a result which he had not against the anticipated. "Divide et impera" had been his king. maxim, and to a certain extent it had succeeded. Separation of parties had enfeebled their opposition to his government; but now their sudden combination overthrew it. When the preliminary articles of peace with America were laid before Parliament, the parties of Lord North and Mr. Fox, so long opposed to each other, and whose "The Coalipolitical hostility had been imbittered by the tion." most acrimonious disputes, formed a "Coalition," and outvoted the Government in the House of Com- 17th and 21st mons. Overborne by numbers, the minister re- Feb., 1783. signed; and the king alone confronted this powerful Coalition. The struggle which ensued was one of the most critical in our modern constitutional history. The prerogatives of the Crown on the one side, and the powers of Parliament on the other, were more strained than at any time since the Revolution. But the strong will of the king, and the courage and address of his youthful councillor, Mr. Pitt, prevailed. They carried the people with them; and the ascendency of the Crown was established for many years, to an extent which even the king himself could scarcely have ventured to hope.

The leaders of the Coalition naturally expected to succeed to power; but the king was resolved to resist their pretensions. He sought Mr. Pitt's assistance to form a government, and with such a minister would have braved the united forces of the Opposition. But that sagacious statesman, though not yet twenty-four years of age,2 had taken an accurate survey of the state of parties, and of public opinion; and seeing that it was not yet the time. for putting himself in the front of the battle, he resisted the solicitations of his Majesty, and the advice of his friends, 1 Lord Auckland's Cor., i. 9, 41.

2 Mr. Pitt was born 28th May, 1759.