when their advice was disregarded by the Crown, or their policy disapproved by Parliament. With ministers thus responsible, "the king could do no wrong." The Stuarts had strained prerogative so far, that it had twice snapped asunder in their hands. They had exercised it personally, and were held personally responsible for its exercise. One had paid the penalty with his head: another with his crown; and their family had been proscribed for ever. But now, if the prerogative was strained, the ministers were condemned, and not the king. If the people cried out against the government,— instead of a revolution, there was merely a change of ministry. Instead of dangerous conflicts between the Crown and the Parliament, there succeeded struggles between rival parties for parliamentary majorities; and the successful party wielded all the power of the state. Upon ministers, therefore, devolved the entire burthen of public affairs they relieved the Crown of its cares and perils, but, at the same time, they appropriated nearly all its authority. The king reigned, but his ministers governed. To an ambitious prince, this natural result of constiof Hanover. tutional government could not fail to be distasteful; but the rule of the House of Hanover had hitherto been peculiarly favourable to its development. With George I. and George II., Hanoverian politics had occupied the first place in their thoughts and affections. Of English politics, English society, and even the English language, they knew little. The troublesome energies of Parliament were an enigma to them; and. they cheerfully acquiesced in the ascendency of able ministers who had suppressed rebellions, and crushed pretenders to their crown, who had triumphed over parliamentary opposition, and had borne all the burthen of the government. Kings of the House Left to the indulgence of their own personal tastes,— occupied by frequent visits to the land of their birth, ---by a German court, favourites and mistresses, they were not anxious to engage, more than was necessary, in the turbulent contests of a constitutional government. Having lent their name and authority to competent ministers, they acted upon their advice, and aided them by all the means at the disposal of the court. of the Whig This authority had fallen to the lot of ministers Ascenconnected with the Whig party, to whom the House of deney Hanover mainly owed its throne. The most eminent party. of the Tories had been tainted with Jacobite principles and connexions; and some of them had even plotted for the restoration of the Stuarts. From their ranks the Pretender had twice drawn the main body of his adherents. The Whigs, indeed, could not lay claim to exclusive loyalty: nor were the Tories generally obnoxious to the charge of disaffection; but the Whigs having acquired a superior title to the favours of the court, and being once admitted to office, contrived, by union amongst themselves, by borough interests, and by their monopoly of the influence of the Crown, to secure an ascendency in Parliament which, for nearly fifty years, was almost unassailable. Until the fall of Sir Robert Walpole the Whigs had been compact and united; and their policy had generally been to carry out, in practice, the principles of the Revolution. When no longer under the guidance of that minister, their coherence, as a party, was disturbed; and they became divided into families and cliques. To use the words of Lord John Russell, this "was the age of small factions." The distinctive policy of the party 1 Introduction to vol. iii. of Bedford Correspondence. Accession of George His his minis ters. was lost in the personal objects of its leaders; but poli- The young king, George III., on succeeding to the throne, regarded with settled jealousy the power jealousy of of his ministers, as an encroachment on his own, and resolved to break it down. His personal popularity was such as to facilitate the execution of this design. Well knowing that the foreign extraction of his predecessors had repressed the affections of their people, he added, with his own hand, to the draft of his first speech to Parliament, the winning phrase, “Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.” 1 The Stuarts were now the aliens, and not the Hanoverian king. A new reign, also, was favourable to the healing of political differences, and to the fusion of parties. In Scotland, a few fanatical non-jurors may still have grudged their allegiance to an uncovenanted king. But none of the young king's subjects had plotted against his throne; and few could be suspected of adherence to the fallen cause of the Stuarts, which had been hopelessly abandoned since the rebellion of 1745. The close phalanx of the Whig party had already been broken; and Mr. Pitt had striven to conciliate the Tories, and put an end to the bitter feuds by which the kingdom had been distracted. No party was now in disgrace at court; but Whigs, Tories, and 1 The king himself bore testimony to this fact upwards of forty years afterwards. Rose's Correspondence, ii. 189 (Diary). Jacobites thronged to St. James's, and vied with each other in demonstrations of loyalty and devotion.1 education. The king was naturally ambitious, and fond of the The king's active exercise of power; and his education, if otherwise neglected, had raised his estimate of the personal rights of a king, in the government of his country. So far back as 1752, complaints had been made that the prince was surrounded by Jacobite preceptors, who were training him in arbitrary principles of government. At that time these complaints were discredited as factious calumnies; but the political views of the king, on his accession to the throne, appear to confirm the suspicions entertained concerning his early education. His mother, the Princess Dowager of Wales, -herself ambitious and fond of power, - had derived her views of the rights and authority of a sovereign from German courts; and encouraged the prince's natural propensities by the significant advice of "George, be king."5 Lord Waldegrave, who had been for some time governor to the prince, describes him as "full of princely prejudices contracted in the nursery, and improved by the society of bedchamber-women and pages of the back-stairs." 6 His groom of the stole, Lord Bute,-afterwards so notorious as his minister,--had also given the young prince instruction in the theory of the British Constitution; and knowing little more than the princess herself, of the English people and government, had taught him that his own honour, and the interests of the country required the extension of his personal influence, and a more active exercise of his prerogatives. The chief obstacle to this new policy of the court was found in the established authority of responsible ministers, upheld by party connexions and parliamentary interest. Accordingly, the first object of the king and his advisers was to loosen the ties of party, and break down His deter- the confederacy of the great Whig families.' The king mination to desired to undertake personally the chief administration govern. Lord Bolingbroke's theory. of public affairs, to direct the policy of his ministers, and himself to distribute the patronage of the Crown. He was ambitious not only to reign, but to govern. His will was strong and resolute, his courage high, and his talent for intrigue considerable. He came to the throne determined to exalt the kingly office; and throughout his long reign, he never lost sight of that object. Lord Bolingbroke had conceived the idea of a government under "a patriot king," who should "govern as soon as he begins to reign,"-who should "call into the administration such men as he can assure himself will serve on the same principles on which he intends to govern," and who should "put himself at the head of his people in order to govern, or, more properly, to subdue all parties."3 But it had been no part of Lord Bolingbroke's conception, that the patriot king should 1 See letter of Sir J. Phillips to 2 The Idea of a Patriot King, Works, iv. 274. 3 Ibid., 281, 282. |