1760, George the Second suddenly died, and George the Third, then
twenty-two years old, became King. The situation of George the Third
differed widely from that of his grandfather and that of his
great-grandfather. Many years had elapsed since a sovereign of England
had been an object of affection to any part of his people. The first two
Kings of the House of Hanover had neither those hereditary rights which
have often supplied the defect of merit, nor those personal qualities
which have often supplied the defect of title. A prince may be popular
with little virtue or capacity, if he reigns by birthright derived from
a long line of illustrious predecessors. An usurper may be popular, if
his genius has saved or aggrandized the nation which he governs.
Perhaps no rulers have in our time had a stronger hold on the affection
of subjects than the Emperor Francis, and his son-in-law the Emperor
Napoleon. But imagine a ruler with no better title than Napoleon, and no
better understanding than Francis. Richard Cromwell was such a ruler;
and, as soon as an arm was lifted up against him, he fell without a
struggle, amidst universal derision. George the First and George the
Second were in a situation which bore some resemblance to that of
Richard Cromwell. They were saved from the fate of Richard Cromwell by
the strenuous and able exertions of the Whig party, and by the general
conviction that the nation had no choice but between the House of
Brunswick and Popery. But by no class were the Guelphs regarded with
that devoted affection, of which Charles the First, Charles the Second,
and James the Second, in spite of the greatest faults, and in the midst
of the greatest misfortunes, received innumerable proofs. Those Whigs
who stood by the new dynasty so manfully with purse and sword did so on
principles independent of, and indeed almost incompatible with, the
sentiment of devoted loyalty. The moderate Tories regarded the foreign
dynasty as a great evil, which must be endured for fear of a greater
evil. In the eyes of the high Tories, the Elector was the most hateful
of robbers and tyrants. The crown of another was on his head; the blood
of the brave and loyal was on his hands. Thus, during many years, the
Kings of England were objects of strong personal aversion to many of
their subjects, and of strong personal attachment to none. They found,
indeed, firm and cordial support against the pretender to their throne;
but this support was given, not at all for their sake, but for the sake
of a religious and political system which would have been endangered by
their fall. This support, too, they were compelled to purchase by
perpetually sacrificing their private inclinations to the party which
had set them on the throne, and which maintained them there.
At the close of the reign of George the Second, the feeling of aversion
with which the House of Brunswick had long been regarded by half the
nation had died away; but no feeling of affection to that house had yet
sprung up. There was little, indeed, in the old King's character to
inspire esteem or tenderness. He was not our countryman. He never set
foot on our soil till he was more than thirty years old. His speech
bewrayed his foreign origin and breeding. His love for his native land,
though the most amiable part of his character, was not likely to endear
him to his British subjects. He was never so happy as when he could
exchange St. James's for Hernhausen. Year after year our fleets were
employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the interests of his
kingdom were as nothing to him when compared with the interests of his
Electorate. As to the rest, he had neither the qualities which make
dulness respectable, nor the qualities which make libertinism
attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse father, an unfaithful
husband and an ungraceful lover. Not one magnanimous or humane action is
recorded of him; but many instances of meanness, and of a harshness
which, but for the strong constitutional restraints under which he was
placed, might have made the misery of his people.
He died; and at once a new world opened. The young King was a born
Englishman. All his tastes and habits, good or bad, were English. No
portion of his subjects had anything to reproach him with. Even the
remaining adherents of the House of Stuart could scarcely impute to him
the guilt of usurpation. He was not responsible for the Revolution, for
the Act of Settlement, for the suppression of the risings of 1715 and of
1745. He was innocent of the blood of Derwentwater and Kilmarnock, of
Balmerino and Cameron. Born fifty years after the old line had been
expelled, fourth in descent and third in succession of the Hanoverian
dynasty, he might plead some show of hereditary right. His age, his
appearance, and all that was known of his character, conciliated public
favor. He was in the bloom of youth; his person and address were
pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no vice; and flattery might, without
any glaring absurdity, ascribe to him many princely virtues.
It is not strange, therefore, that the sentiment of loyalty--a
sentiment which had lately seemed to be as much out of date as the
belief in witches or the practice of pilgrimage--should, from the day of
his accession, have begun to revive. The Tories in particular, who had
always been inclined to King-worship, and who had long felt with pain
the want of an idol before whom they could bow themselves down, were as
joyful as the priests of Apis, when, after a long interval, they had
found a new calf to adore. It was soon clear that George the Third was
regarded by a portion of the nation with a very different feeling from
that which his two predecessors had inspired. They had been merely First
Magistrates, Doges, Stadtholders; he was emphatically a King, the
anointed of Heaven, the breath of his people's nostrils. The years of
the widowhood and mourning of the Tory party were over. Dido had kept
faith long enough to the cold ashes of a former lord; she had at last
found a comforter, and recognized the vestiges of the old flame. The
golden days of Harley would return. The Somersets, the Lees, and the
Wyndhams would again surround the throne. The latitudinarian prelates,
who had not been ashamed to correspond with Doddridge and to shake hands
with Whiston, would be succeeded by divines of the temper of South and
Atterbury. The devotion which had been so signally shown to the House of
Stuart, which had been proof against defeats, confiscations, and
proscriptions, which perfidy, oppression, ingratitude, could not weary
out, was now transferred entire to the House of Brunswick. If George the
Third would but accept the homage of the Cavaliers and High Churchmen,
he should be to them all that Charles the First and Charles the Second
had been.
The Prince, whose accession was thus hailed by a great party long
estranged from his house, had received from nature a strong will, a
firmness of temper to which a harsher name might perhaps be given, and
an understanding not, indeed, acute or enlarged, but such as qualified
him to be a good man of business. But his character had not yet fully
developed itself. He had been brought up in strict seclusion. The
detractors of the Princess Dowager of Wales affirmed that she had kept
her children from commerce with society, in order that she might hold an
undivided empire over their minds. She gave a very different explanation
of her conduct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons and daughters
mix in the world, if they could do so without risk to their morals. But
the profligacy of the people of quality alarmed her. The young men were
all rakes; the young women made love, instead of waiting till it was
made to them. She could not bear to expose those whom she loved best to
the contaminating influence of such society. The moral advantages of the
system of education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of
Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. George
the Third was indeed no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind
only half opened, and was for some time entirely under the influence of
his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, John Stuart, Earl of Bute.
The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even by name, to the country which
he was soon to govern. He had, indeed, a short time after he came of
age, been chosen to fill a vacancy which, in the middle of a Parliament,
had taken place among the Scotch representative peers. He had disobliged
the Whig ministers by giving some silent votes with the Tories, had
consequently lost his seat at the next dissolution, and had never been
reelected. Near twenty years had elapsed since he had borne any part in
politics. He had passed some of those years at his seat in one of the
Hebrides, and from that retirement he had emerged as one of the
household of Prince Frederic. Lord Bute, excluded from public life, had
found out many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a tolerable actor in
private theatricals, and was particularly successful in the part of
Lothario. A handsome leg, to which both painters and satirists took care
to give prominence, was among his chief qualifications for the stage. He
devised quaint dresses for masquerades. He dabbled in geometry,
mechanics, and botany. He paid some attention to antiquities and works
of art, and was considered in his own circle as a judge of painting,
architecture, and poetry. It is said that his spelling was incorrect.
But though, in our time, incorrect spelling is justly considered as a
proof of sordid ignorance, it would be unjust to apply the same rule to
people who lived a century ago. The novel of Sir Charles Grandison was
published about the time at which Lord Bute made his appearance at
Leicester House. Our readers may perhaps remember the account which
Charlotte Grandison gives of her two lovers. One of them, a fashionable
baronet who talks French and Italian fluently, cannot write a line in
his own language without some sin against orthography; the other, who is
represented as a most respectable specimen of the young aristocracy, and
something of a virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty well for a
lord. On the whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man of
cultivated mind. He was also a man of undoubted honor. But his
understanding was narrow, and his manners cold and haughty. His
qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by
Frederic, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of sneering at his
dependents. "Bute," said his Royal Highness, "you are the very man to be
envoy at some small proud German court where there is nothing to do."
Scandal represented the Groom of the Stole as the favored lover of the
Princess Dowager. He was undoubtedly her confidential friend. The
influence which the two united exercised over the mind of the King was
for a time unbounded. The Princess, a woman and a foreigner, was not
likely to be a judicious adviser about affairs of state. The Earl could
scarcely be said to have served even a novitiate in politics. His
notions of government had been acquired in the society which had been in
the habit of assembling round Frederic at Kew and Leicester House. That
society consisted principally of Tories, who had been reconciled to the
House of Hanover by the civility with which the Prince had treated them,
and by the hope of obtaining high preferment when he should come to the
throne. Their political creed was a peculiar modification of Toryism. It
was the creed neither of the Tories of the seventeenth nor of the Tories
of the nineteenth century. It was the creed, not of Filmer and
Sacheverell, not of Perceval and Eldon, but of the sect of which
Bolingbroke may be considered as the chief doctor. This sect deserves
commendation for having pointed out and justly reprobated some great
abuses which sprang up during the long domination of the Whigs. But it
is far easier to point out and reprobate abuses than to propose
beneficial reforms; and the reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would
either have been utterly inefficient, or would have produced much more
mischief than they would have removed.
The revolution had saved the nation from one class of evils, but had at
the same time--such is the imperfection of all things human--engendered
or aggravated another class of evils which required new remedies.
Liberty and property were secure from the attacks of prerogative.
Conscience was respected. No government ventured to infringe any of the
rights solemnly recognized by the instrument which had called William
and Mary to the throne. But it cannot be denied that, under the new
system, the public interests and the public morals were seriously
endangered by corruption and faction. During the long struggle against
the Stuarts, the chief object of the most enlightened statesmen had been
to strengthen the House of Commons. The struggle was over; the victory
was won; the House of Commons was supreme in the state; and all the
vices which had till then been latent in the representative system were
rapidly developed by prosperity and power. Scarcely had the executive
government become really responsible to the House of Commons, when it
began to appear that the House of Commons was not really responsible to
the nation. Many of the constituent bodies were under the absolute
control of individuals; many were notoriously at the command of the
highest bidder. The debates were not published. It was very seldom known
out of doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the ministry was
accountable to the Parliament, the majority of the Parliament was
accountable to nobody. In such circumstances, nothing could be more
natural than that the members should insist on being paid for their
votes, should form themselves into combinations for the purpose of
raising the price of their votes, and should at critical conjunctures
extort large wages by threatening a strike. Thus the Whig ministers of
George the First and George the Second were compelled to reduce
corruption to a system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale.
If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely be
wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to deprive the House
of Commons of its weight in the state. Such a course would undoubtedly
have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to parliamentary
factions; for, when votes cease to be of importance, they will cease to
be bought; and, when knaves can get nothing by combining, they will
cease to combine. But to destroy corruption and faction by introducing
despotism would have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy
evidently was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation;
and this was to be effected in two ways: first, by giving publicity to
parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on his trial
before the tribunal of public opinion; and secondly, by so reforming the
constitution of the House that no man should be able to sit in it who
had not been returned by a respectable and independent body of
constituents.
Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very different
mode of treating the diseases of the state. Their doctrine was that a
vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot King would at once break
all factious combinations, and supersede the pretended necessity of
bribing members of Parliament. The King had only to resolve that he
would be master, that he would not be held in thraldom by any set of
men, that he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had
confidence, without distinction of party, and that he would restrain his
servants from influencing by immoral means either the constituent bodies
or the representative body. This childish scheme proved that those who
proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with which they
pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence of corruption and
faction was that a House of Commons, not accountable to the people, was
more powerful than the King. Bolingbroke's remedy could be applied only
by a King more powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot
Prince to govern in defiance of the body without whose consent he could
not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or
defray even the charges of his own household? Was he to dissolve the
Parliament? And what was he likely to gain by appealing to Sudbury and
Old Sarum against the venality of their representatives? Was he to send
out privy seals? Was he to levy ship-money? If so, this boasted reform
must commence in all probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must
be consummated by the establishment of absolute monarchy. Or was the
patriot King to carry the House of Commons with him in his upright
designs? By what means? Interdicting himself from the use of corrupt
influence, what motive was he to address to the Dodingtons and
Winningtons? Was cupidity, strengthened by habit, to be laid asleep by a
few fine sentences about virtue and union?
Absurd as this theory was, it had many admirers, particularly among men
of letters. It was now to be reduced to practice; and the result was, as
any man of sagacity must have foreseen, the most piteous and ridiculous
of failures.
On the very day of the young King's accession, appeared some signs which
indicated the approach of a great change. The speech which he made to
his council was not submitted to the cabinet. It was drawn up by Bute,
and contained some expressions which might be construed into reflections
on the conduct of affairs during the late reign. Pitt remonstrated, and
begged that these expressions might be softened down in the printed
copy; but it was not till after some hours of altercation that Bute
yielded; and, even after Bute had yielded, the King affected to hold out
till the following afternoon. On the same day on which this singular
contest took place, Bute was not only sworn of the privy council, but
introduced into the cabinet.
Soon after this, Lord Holdernesse, one of the Secretaries of State, in
pursuance of a plan concerted with the court, resigned the seals. Bute
was instantly appointed to the vacant place. A general election speedily
followed, and the new Secretary entered Parliament in the only way in
which he then could enter it, as one of the sixteen representative peers
of Scotland.[22]
Had the ministers been firmly united, it can scarcely be doubted that
they would have been able to withstand the court. The parliamentary
influence of the Whig aristocracy, combined with the genius, the
virtue, and the fame of Pitt, would have been irresistible. But there
had been in the cabinet of George the Second latent jealousies and
enmities, which now began to show themselves. Pitt had been estranged
from his old ally Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of the
ministers were envious of Pitt's popularity. Others were, not altogether
without cause, disgusted by his imperious and haughty demeanor. Others,
again, were honestly opposed to some parts of his policy. They admitted
that he had found the country in the depths of humiliation, and had
raised it to the height of glory; they admitted that he had conducted
the war with energy, ability, and splendid success; but they began to
hint that the drain on the resources of the state was unexampled, and
that the public debt was increasing with a speed at which Montague or
Godolphin would have stood aghast. Some of the acquisitions made by our
fleets and armies were, it was acknowledged, profitable as well as
honorable; but, now that George the Second was dead, a courtier might
venture to ask why England was to become a party in a dispute between
two German powers. What was it to her whether the House of Hapsburg or
the House of Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English
regiments fighting on the Main? Why were the Prussian battalions paid
with English gold? The great minister seemed to think it beneath him to
calculate the price of victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, as
the streets were illuminated, as French banners were carried in triumph
through London, it was to him matter of indifference to what extent the
public burdens were augmented. Nay he seemed to glory in the magnitude
of those sacrifices which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and
success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly regret. There
was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from
the camp of Prince Ferdinand to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival
the magnificence of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had we
borrowed, in four years of war, more than the most skilful and
economical government would pay in forty years of peace. But the
prospect of peace was as remote as ever. It could not be doubted that
France, smarting and prostrate, would consent to fair terms of
accommodation; but this was not what Pitt wanted. War had made him
powerful and popular; with war, all that was brightest in his life was
associated; for war, his talents were peculiarly fitted. He had at
length begun to love war for its own sake, and was more disposed to
quarrel with neutrals than to make peace with enemies.
Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of Hardwicke;
but no member of the government held these opinions so strongly as
George Grenville, the Treasurer of the Navy. George Grenville was
brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned one of Pitt's
personal and political friends. But it is difficult to conceive two men
of talents and integrity more utterly unlike each other. Pitt, as his
sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser's Faery Queen.
He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was
a wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of
that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never studied
public law as a system; and was, indeed, so ignorant of the whole
subject that George the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly
that a man who had never read Vattel should presume to undertake the
direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed
by high and rare gifts, by a strange power of inspiring great masses of
men with confidence and affection, by an eloquence which not only
delighted the ear, but stirred the blood, and brought tears into the
eyes, by originality in devising plans, by vigor in executing them.
Grenville, on the other hand, was by nature and habit a man of details.
He had been bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and acuteness
of the Temple into official and parliamentary life. He was supposed to
be intimately acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. He
had paid especial attention to the law of Parliament, and was so learned
in all things relating to the privileges and orders of the House of
Commons that those who loved him least pronounced him the only person
competent to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His speeches were generally
instructive, and sometimes, from the gravity and earnestness with which
he spoke, even impressive, but never brilliant, and generally tedious.
Indeed, even when he was at the head of affairs, he sometimes found it
difficult to obtain the ear of the House. In disposition as well as in
intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly
regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it;
and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville,
though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man
of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and
popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive;
Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing
was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the
dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always
croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an
overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, in a
time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking
down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able
to refrain from weeping because she could find nothing at which to weep.
Such a man was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity Grenville
opposed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced even those who
hated him to respect him.
It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were, should
take very different views of the situation of affairs. Pitt could see
nothing but the trophies; Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt
boasted that England was victorious at once in America, in India, and in
Germany, the umpire of the Continent, the mistress of the sea. Grenville
cast up the subsidies, sighed over the army extraordinaries, and groaned
in spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in one
year.
With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for Bute to deal.
Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the young King in
the late reign, by refusing to support a creature of Bute at a Hampshire
election. He was now not only turned out, but in the closet, when he
delivered up his seal of office, was treated with gross incivility.