The new sovereign was a selfish, coarse old man, who in private life
would, as Lady Montagu said, have passed for an honest blockhead. He
neither knew anything about England, nor did he desire to know
anything of it. He could not speak a word of the language of the
country he was called to govern, and he made no attempt to learn it;
even the coronation service had to be explained to him as best it
might, in such broken Latin as the ministers could muster.
Laboring under these disadvantages he wisely declined to take any
active part in the affairs of the nation. He trusted everything to
his Whig friends (S532) and let them, with Sir Robert Walpole at their
head, manage the country in their own way.
Forunately, the great body of the English people were abundantly able
to take care of themselves. A noted French writer said of them that
they resembled a barrel of their own beer, froth at the top, dregs at
the bottom, but thoroughly sound and wholesome in the middle. It was
this middle class, with their solid practical good sense, that kept
the nation right.
They were by no means enthusiastic worshipers of the German King who
had come to reign over them, but they saw that he had three good
qualities: he was no hypocrite, he did not waste the people's money,
and he was a man of unquestioned courage. But they also saw more than
this, for they realized that though George I might be as heavy, dull,
and wooden as the figurehead of an old-fashioned ship, yet, like that
figurehead, he stood for something greater and better than himself,--
for he represented Protestantism, with civil and religious liberty,--
and so the people gave him their allegiance.