sary. Not only were covers transmitted by hundreds, packed in boxes," to be used at some future time, but "far greater perversions of the original principle took place." He then quotes a case where a member "decorated with the Order of the Bath which he appears to consider an aggravation of the offence—sent thirty-three letters to London full of garden seeds, and though the Postmaster-General had them carried to the Speaker, yet the matter was hushed up because the offender was one of the Government majority. In 1760, the privilege was limited to franking parcels not exceeding two ounces in weight. Later, during the American war, Lord North proposed to relieve the strain on the revenue by suppressing the exemption altogether, but his statement was received with such a general howl of dis. approbation, that the idea was dropped at once for fear of alienating votes. Mr. Pitt succeeded, however, in placing some limits on the abuse. He proposed that all franks should be dated with the time and place. This measure, which practically limited the right to the personal use of members,-for which it was originally intended,-was carried unanimously. From this time the privilege was watched with considerable jealousy ; and though innumerable frauds must have been perpetrated—especially on the eve of an election—yet they were no longer done openly and unblushingly in the light of day. The privilege was not finally given up till the establishnent of the penny post, in 1840.

The old rule that Parliament, being the creation of the Crown, was ipso facto dissolved by a demise of the Crown, was considerably reduced in effect by a statute of Anne (6 Anne c. 7), which provided that it should continue for six months after such event. A further statute of George III. (37 Geo. III. c. 127) in view of a very possible contingency, added that if there should be no Parliament in existence at a demise of the Crown, the last one should reassemble for six months. The connection, however, between a demise of the Crown and a Dissolution of Parliament was not finally severed till late in the next century (Reform Act, 1867).

1

CHAPTER XV.

PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF GEORGE III.

SECTION 1.-Struggle with the House of Commons.

THE

HE policy of George III. may be described as a last attempt to restore the waning authority of the Crown to its original lustre. He fancied that it laboured under a temporary eclipse; he did not see that personal government had become an anachronism. With this object well in view, he designed to break up the strong phalanx of the great Whig houses, which had so long curbed the royal power to utter ineptitude. Pitt's Ministry must fall; Pitt himself be driven from office; a new Government be formed, in which every member should be, to a certain extent, dependent on the Crown. George intended to avail himself of the rivalry already existing between his ministers, in order to destroy the Cabinet; and by holding out hopes of supremacy to those who should be submissive, to produce a general subservience to his will. Working thus on the general thirst for office, which was the common attribute of most of the prominent statesmen of the time, he proposed to patch together a Ministry out of the most heterogeneous materials, which could never unite into a coherent whole, which should be held together by his will and by the individual greed of its members, and which must eventually fall hopelessly to pieces under the influence of internal faction. In this way he would ruin the credit of the Whig leaders by debasing their motives, and destroy their influence by pitting them one against the other in a personal scramble for the seat of power. Then, when the favourable moment came, he would seize the opportunity to commit the government to some mediocre statesman, who would be thoroughly obedient to his authority, and who would rely not so much on the solidity of his measures, or any parliamentary influence of his own, as on the steady support and parliamentary interest of the king. To give effect to

his plans, George intended to resume the Crown patronage which had for so long formed the main prop and stay of the Whig power, to employ it in a precisely similar manner, and to create thereby for himself a party in Parliament which should be thoroughly devoted to his service, and should owe obedience not to the minister, or to the Cabinet, but to the king alone. The command of such a troop of "King's Friends" as they were later called, would give him a very considerable control over the House and his ministers. He could at least insure that no measure which he disliked should be carried through Parliament, unless all parties united against him. There was, moreover, the further advantage that ministers, conscious of the uncertainty of their majority, would be apt to shirk or suppress any measures to which the king was known to be hostile.

To find the raw material for the creation of this party, he intended to avail himself of the regeneration of the Tories, who, now that Jacobitism was practically extinct, and the throne occupied by an English king whose views were worthy of the Stuarts themselves, were quite ready to transfer their allegiance to George, and even invest him with all the attributes of Divine authority which they had hitherto reserved exclusively for the exiled line. This new-born loyalty of the Tories supplied George with a convenient nucleus for the foundation of his party. He found that he could rely on the consistent support of a small but united body from the first; that his natural opponents were incapacitated from any vigorous action by their own dissensions; and that he might expect continual accessions to his own list of supporters in the shape of deserters from the enemies' ranks, He had, moreover, at the outset, the sympathy of the people, who felt that, the significance of the old watchwords being practically obsolete, there was no reason why men of ability should any longer be excluded from office simply because they were Tories.

It was easy to attack the Whigs in their existing state, for the apparently united and patriotic Ministry, which had borne the burdens and reaped the glory of the Seven Years' War, was a house divided against itself, split, rent, and tottering to its foundations under the secret influence of the factious disputes and personal quarrels which had broken out during the first Ministry of

Newcastle, and, lingering on in a smouldering state, thinly surfaced over by the temporary pressure of national feeling, were ready to burst forth again into a conflagration the moment that pressure was removed. No sooner was the question of peace mooted, than the Cabinet fell at once to pieces. This was the king's opportunity. Had he made use of his early popularity to form on their ruins a Ministry including the ablest men of all parties, public opinion would have applauded, and the country would have trusted and supported him. But his narrow intellect and restricted education had inspired him with a violent prejudice against the whole Whig party, and induced him to rely entirely on a man who had neither administrative talents, oratorical powers, nor personal popularity to recommend him as a constitutional adviser. Bute's fall-there is no space for details—was as rapid and complete as his rise had been sudden and unusual, leaving his master to engage single-handed in an obstinate contest with the various sections of the disintegrated and discomfited Whig party, extending down to 1770, amid the strangest alternations of victory and defeat to both sides. The king, however, gained steadily. The very victories of his opponents were triumphs like those of Pyrrhus, which were as bad as defeat, for the king almost invariably contrived to have a hand in the formation of every new Ministry, and his influence was marked by the introduction of some element of disorder and weakness. All through the balance of success lay wholly with George, and in the end his triumph was decisive and complete. The Whig party was broken and scattered. The four sections into which it was divided were at daggers drawn with each other. It was impossible for them to unite as a coherent whole on any question of principle. It was easier for the followers of Bedford and Grenville to join themselves with the Tories, than to act with their old comrades of the Whig Oligarchy. The King's Friends, moreover, were now a large and well disciplined party, whose influence in Parliament gave George a very real control of its action. Beginning merely with the personal friends of the king and Lord Bute, it had naturally attracted the sympathies of the Tories, it had been quickly recruited by a number of self-seeking statesmen of the type of the elder Fox, and its numbers were continually enlarged by accessions from the ranks of the Whigs.

when the advantages of adhering to the king began to be more distinctly understood. Relying therefore on the implicit obedience of his followers, and the utter disorganization of the Opposi tion, which became clearly apparent on the downfall of the Grafton Ministry in 1770, George seized the opportunity to grasp the reins of power into his own hands, and to thrust into the first place his own lieutenant, Lord North, a man after his own heart, in whose subservience he had the utmost confidence. The year 1770 dates the commencement of a new period, during which George was really endeavouring to carry into practice the principles of personal government, which were so deeply implanted in his character, and which he fondly imagined would be at once beneficial and acceptable to the English people.

One of the most important results of the changes effected in the decade 1760-70, was the rise of modern Radicalism, almost as if by natural antagonism to that revival of high Tory principles which prompted the stringent measures of repression directed against Wilkes. The Radicals advocated sweeping parliamentary reforms of an entirely original character. They proposed that members of Parliament should put off their senatorial character, to become the delegates of their constituents. They advocated annual Parliaments, the payment of members, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and other measures, the result of which would have been partly to destroy the reviving power of the Tory party, and partly to transfer the entire control of the executive to the people in the widest sense of the term. At first, however, they were but a small party, and the violence of their principal orators, among whom were Wilkes, Glynn, Oliver, Sawbridge, Townsend, and John Horne Tooke, discredited them in the eyes of the governing classes. The principal result of the movement in its early stages was to instil new life into the decrepit Whig party, to compel them to abandon their old purely selfish, oligarchical, place-hunting characteristics, and take up an entirely new and advanced position as the advocates of Parliamentary Reform. This development, however, was not yet apparent in Parliament.

Lord North began with an enormously strong Government. He could rely of course upon the Tories; he could also rely on two sections of the Whigs, respectively known as the Bedford and