To these sources of influence must be added the Loyalty of the people. loyalty of the British people. He must indeed be a bad king, whom the people do not love. Equally remarkable are their steady obedience to the law, and respect for authority. Their sympathies are generally on the side of the government. In a good cause their active support may be relied upon; and even in a bad cause, their prejudices have more often been enlisted in favour of the government, than against it. How great then, for good or for evil, were the powers of a British sovereign and his ministers. The destinies of a great people depended upon their wisdom, nearly as much as if they had wielded arbitrary power. the per ence of the But while these various sources of influence con- Restrictinued to maintain the political ascendency of the tions on crown, the personal share of the sovereign in the sonal influgovernment of the country was considerably restricted. sovereign. William III., the most able statesman of his day, while representing the principles of the Revolution, was yet his own minister for foreign affairs, conducted negotiations abroad, and commanded armies in the field. But henceforward a succession of sovereigns less capable than William, and of ministers gifted with extraordinary ability and force of character, rapidly reduced to practice the theory of ministerial responsibility. responsi The government of the state was conducted, through- Ministerial out all its departments, by ministers responsible to bility. Parliament for every act of their administration, – without whose advice no act could be done who could be dismissed for incapacity or failure, and impeached for political crimes; and who resigned 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, 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 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 constithe House 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. 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 Kings of of Hanover. 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. dency of This authority had fallen to the lot of ministers Ascenconnected with the Whig party, to whom the House of the Whig 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 was lost in the personal objects of its leaders; but political power still remained in the same hands; and, by alliances rather than by union, the " great Whig families," and others admitted to a share of their 1 Introduction to vol. iii. of Bedford Correspondence. power, Accession of George his minis ters. continued to engross all the high offices of state, and to distribute among their personal adherents the entire patronage of the crown. The young king, George III., on succeeding to the throne, regarded with settled jealousy the power of jealousy 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 Jacobites thronged to St. James's, and vied with each other in demonstrations of loyalty and devotion.2 The king himself bore testimony to this fact upwards of forty years afterwards.— Rose's Corr., ii. 189. 2 "The Earl of Lichfield, Sir Walter Bagot, and the principal Jacobites, went to Court, which education. The king was naturally ambitious, and delighted in The king's the active exercise of power; and his education,— otherwise neglected1,- 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.2 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 power3,—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." 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." 5 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 1 Dodington's Diary, 171. The Princess of Wales said: "His booklearning she was no judge of, though she supposed it small or useless." Ibid., 357; Wraxall's Mem., ii. 39. Walpole's Mem., i. 55. Lord Brougham's Statesmen: Works, iii. 11. 2 See debate in House of Lords, 22nd March, 1753; Walpole's Mem., iv. 139; Dodington's Diary, 190, 3 Walpole says, "The princess, 4 Rockingham Mem., i. 3. |