tinuance of this personal royal dictation, under the forms of the constitution established in 1688, or a return to the system of cabinet government taking its direction from the house of commons and responsible to it and to public opinion the system which had developed so steadily during the first half of the century. It was no doubt the perception by the king that this question was involved that made him so reluctant to bring the war to an end. The fact was recognized clearly enough at the time by the opposition party, and is the explanation of their vigorous support of the American cause. The colonies were fighting the battle of Englishmen at home. The fact has also been abundantly recognized in later times, and there can be no doubt but that this interpretation was correct.

As disasters fell upon the British cause, and as all her old colonial rivals, France, Spain, and Holland, appeared in the field against her, the opposition gathered strength, became more frank in pushing the constitutional point, and began to be supported by increasing public opinion. In 1780 John Dunning obtained a majority in the house of commons for a resolution affirming "that the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." It required, however, two years more of struggle, with many motions equivalent to a vote of want of confidence carried against the ministry, before the king would yield, and at the moment only because Lord North peremptorily resigned on March 20, 1782.

George was obliged to accept, under the whig Marquis of Rockingham, a ministry which he detested, as well as the cabinet of Shelburne later in the year, and the coalition ministry of Fox and North in 1783; and he was obliged to accept them now not because, as in the early part of his reign, personal and factional conditions rendered any other course impossible, but because public opinion and the house of commons was in control. A long step had been 4 A. and S., 494.

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taken back towards cabinet government. The king, however, had no intention of abandoning his ideals without a further struggle, and it was really due to the tact and political skill of the younger William Pitt that ministerial responsibility was reestablished.

Pitt early began to display the unusual gifts which won him his place in English history and was carefully trained by his father for public life. From the moment of his entry into the house of commons, then barely twenty-one years of age, he attracted attention to himself as likely to be equal to the highest demands. The king himself soon concluded that he was the man who could rescue him from his embarrassments. In the cabinet of Shelburne he was given the difficult and responsible place of chancellor of the exchequer, but he would not enter the coalition ministry of Fox and North. Before long the king in his anxiety to be rid of this ministry began to urge him to form a cabinet of his own, but Pitt, with that rare instinct for public opinion which distinguished him, refused to accept until the time had come, as he believed, when he could win the support of a secure majority. He had no mind to become another Lord North, sustained by the king whatever might be the feeling of the nation.

He judged the moment favorable in December, 1783. Fox's bill for the regulation of the East India Company had been carried by a large majority in the commons, in spite of the known dislike of the king for the measure. To defeat it in the lords George took an extraordinary step, unconstitutional even at that time. He gave to Earl Temple a card on which he had written these words: "His Majesty allows Earl Temple to say that whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as an enemy; and if these words were not strong enough, Earl Temple might use whatever words he might deem stronger and more to the purpose." Earlier kings had certainly done as much, even William III, though in a less formal way, but the house of commons immediately resolved, by a

vote of almost two to one," that it is now necessary to declare, that to report any opinion, or pretended opinion, of his Majesty, upon any bill, or other proceeding, depending in either House of Parliament, with a view to influence the votes of the members, is a high crime and misdemeanor, derogatory to the honor of the crown, a breach of the fundamental privileges of parliament, and subversive of the constitution." A day or two later it was resolved, in view of the necessity of reforms in the East Indies, " that this House will consider as an enemy to his country, any person who shall presume to advise his Majesty to prevent, or in any manner interrupt, the discharge of this important duty." In spite of the attitude of the house of commons, the king succeeded. The lords rejected the bill, and the next day he dismissed the ministry of Fox and North.

Pitt now accepted the duty of forming a cabinet. By doing so he made himself responsible, according to modern ideas, for all the king had done, but it must be remembered that the clarity of our ideas about cabinet government is due in considerable part to the events of this crisis. Pitt won his victory, but he made another like it impossible, for the dramatic struggle fixed firmly in public consciousness the due relation of prime ministers to king and commons. Pitt was then some months short of his twenty-fifth birthday, and his effort to form a cabinet was at first greeted with ridicule. It was "a kingdom trusted to a school-boy's care"; it was "a boyish prank "; the cabinet was "a set of children playing at ministers and must be sent back to school"; it was 66 a mince pie administration " over with Christmas. But it lasted seventeen years. Pitt had judged the situation correctly. He was the only cabinet minister in the commons. He had the support of only one good debater. Majorities against him were large and constant. But the house of commons did not fairly represent outside opinion even at the start. Pitt, knowing in which direction the drift was setting, steadily held his ground and let the

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adverse votes dwindle, until on March 8 the majority against him was only one. Then he dissolved parliament, and in the general election following obtained a strong majority. Even under the unreformed parliamentary system of pocket and rotten boroughs, of corrupt elections and unrepresentative distribution of seats, the nation had declared its will with overwhelming force in favor of the new ministry.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.-N. A. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole, 1907. J. Morley, Walpole, 1889. E. Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons, 2 vols., 1903. T. W. Riker, Henry Fox First Lord Holland, 1911. Sir G. O. Trevelyan, The Early History of Charles James Fox, 1880. E. R. Turner, The Cabinet in the Eighteenth Century, E. H. R. xxxii, 192, 1917. D. A. Winstanley, Personal and Party Government, 1910; Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition, 1912.

CHAPTER XVII

THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY

Pitt took office as a tory, but he was not a tory of the type of Bolingbroke or even of the tories of 1760. That party now entered upon a long period of opportunity to guide the state, almost as long as that enjoyed by the whig party in the eighteenth century, but its record of achievement, apart from carrying the country successfully through the great struggle with Napoleon, is hardly equal to its rival's in the earlier period. The generation following 1783 was not favorable to constitutional growth. For a third of a century there is no sustained forward movement to be studied, like the formation of the cabinet system, but only unconnected improvements and the preparation for something better.

Pitt was a tory, but he was a tory of the future rather than of the past. As the tories of 1760 had without qualification accepted the results of the revolution of 1688, so now Pitt, and the party which he may be said to have recreated, accepted as final the whig work of cabinet making and the position into which it had brought the king. We shall see in several important occurrences that George III never recognized the fact that he had been reduced to a merely nominal power in the government, and that he could occasionally still make his power something more than nominal, but these are all isolated cases in which peculiar circumstances aroused the intense prejudices of the king, and the minister preferred not to insist. In the steady every-day working of the government from now on, the prime minister and his cabinet were the real executive. They had succeeded fully to the posi