ernment, 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.

But while these various sources of influence continued to

nal influence

eign.

maintain the political ascendency of the Crown, Restrictions the personal share of the sovereign in the gov- on the perso ernment of the country was considerably re- of the soverstricted. William III., the most able statesman of his day, though 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.

The government of the state was conducted, throughout all its departments, by ministers responsible to Ministerial re Parliament for every act of their administration, sponsibility.

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 forever. 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 burden 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.

House of Han

over.

To an ambitious prince, this natural result of constitutional Kings of the government could not fail to be distasteful; but the rule of the House of Hanover had hitherto been peculiarly favorable 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 burden 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, favorites 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.

This authority had fallen to the lot of ministers connected Ascendency with the Whig party, to whom the House of party. Hanover mainly owed its throne. The most

of the Whig

eminent of the Tories had been tainted with Jacobite principles and connections; 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 favors 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." 1 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 power, continued to engross all the high offices of state, and to distribute among their personal adherents the entire patronage of the Crown.

ters.

The young king, George III., on succeeding to the throne, regarded with settled jealousy the power of his Accession of ministers, as an encroachment on his own, and George III. His jealousy resolved to break it down. His personal popu- of his minislarity was such as to facilitate the execution of thi uesign. 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." 2 The Stuarts were now the aliens, and not the Hanoverian king. A new reign, also, was favorable to the healing of political differences, and to the fusion of parties. In Scotland, a few fanatical nonjurors may still have grudged their allegiance to an uncovenanted king. But none of the young king's subjects had

1 Introduction to vol. iii. of Bedford Correspondence.

2 The king himself bore testimony to this fact upwards of forty years afterwards. Rose's Correspondence, ii, 189 (Diary).

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.1

The king was naturally ambitious, and fond of the active The king's ed- exercise of power; and his education, if otherwise ucation. neglected,2 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 sig nificant advice of "George, be king." Lord Waldegrave,

5

1"The Earl of Lichfield, Sir Walter Bagot, and the principal Jacobites, went to Court, which George Selwyn, a celebrated wit, accounted for from he number of Stuarts that were now at St. James's."- Walpole's Mem.,

14.

2 Dodington's Diary, 171. The Princess of Wales said: "His book. learning she was no judge of, though she supposed it small or useless." Ibid., 357; Wraxall's Mem., ii. 39.

& See debate in House of Lords, 22d March, 1753; Walpole's Mem., iv. 139; Dodington's Diary, 190, 194, 197, 228.

4 Walpole says, "The princess, whose ambition yielded to none." Mem., i. 12. "The princess was ardently fond of power, and all its apna. nages of observance." Adolph. Hist., i. 12

6 Rockingham Mem., i. 3.

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." 1

His groom of the stole, Lord Bute,

afterwards so no

torious 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 honor 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 connections and parliamentary interest. Accordingly, the first object of the king and his advisers was to loosen the ties of party, and break down the confederacy of the great Whig families.2 The king desired to His determiundertake personally the chief administration of ern. 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.

nation to gov.

Lord Bolingbroke had conceived the idea of a government under "a patriot king," who should " Lord Bolinggov- broke's theoern as soon as he begins to reign," who should ry. "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

1 Lord Waldegrave's Mem., 9.

2 See letter of Sir J. Phillips to Mr. Grenville, Sept. 8th, 1763; Grenville Papers, ii. 117; Burke's Present Discontents, Works, ii. 231.

8 The Idea of a Patriot King, Works, iv. 274.