In October of the same year Caroline Matilda, the King's sister, married Christian, King of Denmark, an unfeeling, dissolute brute. Our Princess, who lived very unhappily, was afterwards accused of adultery, and rescued from punishment by a British man-of-war.
In the autumn of 1766, in consequence of the high price of provisions and taxes, large gatherings took place in many parts of the kingdom; these assemblages were dispersed with considerable loss of life, of course by the military, which the House of Brunswick was not slow to use in checking political manifestations. At Derby the people were charged by the cavalry, at Colton eight were shot dead, in Gloucestershire many lives were lost; in fact, from Exeter to Berwick-on-Tweed there was one ferment of discontent and disaffection. The people were heavily taxed, the aristocracy corrupt and careless. As an instance of the madness of the governing classes, it is sufficient to point out that in 1767, while taxation was increasing, the landed gentry, who were rapidly appropriating common lands under Private Enclosure Acts, most audaciously reduced the land tax by one-fourth. During the first thirty-seven years of the reign of George III., there were no less than 1,532 Enclosure Acts passed, affecting in all 2,804,197 acres of land fliched from the nation by a few families. Wealth took and poverty lost; riches got land without burden, and labor inherited burden in lieu of land. It is worth notice that in the early part of the reign of George III., land yielding about a sixth or seventh of its present rental, paid the same nominal tax that it does to-day, the actual amount paid at the present time being however smaller through redemption; and yet then the annual interest on the National Debt was under £4,500,000, while to-day it is over £26,000,000. Then the King's Civil List covered all the expenses of our State ministers and diplomatic representatives; to-day, an enormous additional sum is required, and a Prime Minister professing economy, and well versed in history, has actually the audacity to pretend that the country gains by its present Civil List arrangement.
In 1769 George III. announced to his faithful Commons he owed half a million. John Wilkes and a few others protested, but the money was voted.
In 1770 King George III. succeeded in making several buttons at Kew, and as this is, as far as I am aware, the most useful work of his life, I desire to give it full prominence. His son, afterwards George IV., made a shoebuckle. No other useful product has resulted directly from the efforts of any male of the family.
In 1770 Henry, Duke of Cumberland, the King's brother, was sued by Lord Grosvenor for crim. con., and had to pay £10,000 damages. This same Henry, in the following year, went through the form of marriage with a Mrs. Horton, which marriage, being repudiated by the Court, troubled him but little, and in the lifetime of the lady contracted a second alliance, which gave rise to the famous Olivia Serres legitimacy issue.
The Royal Marriage Act, a most infamous measure for ensuring the perpetuation of vice, and said to be the result of the Lightfoot experience, was introduced to Parliament by a message from George III, on the 20th February, 1772, twelve days after the death of the Princess-Dowager, of Wales. George III. wrote to Lord North on the 26th February: "I expect every nerve to be strained to carry the Bill. It is not a question relating to the Administration, but personally to myself, therefore I have a right to expect a hearty support from every one in my service, and I shall remember defaulters."
In May, 1773, the East India Company, having to come before Parliament for borrowing powers, a select committee was appointed, whose inquiries laid open cases of rapacity and treachery involving the highest personages, and a resolution was carried in the House of Commons affirming that Lord Clive had dishonorably possessed himself of £234,000 at the time of the deposition of Surajah Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier. Besides this, it was proved that Lord Clive received several other large sums in succeeding years. Phillimore describes this transaction, in terrific language, as one of "disgusting and sordid turpitude," declaring that "individual members of the English Government were to be paid for their treachery by a hire, the amount of which is almost incredible." A few years after this exposure, Lord Clive committed suicide.
On the 18th of December, 1773, the celebrated cargoes of tea were thrown over in Boston Harbor. The tea duty was a trifling one, but was unfortunately insisted upon by the King's Government as an assertion of the right of the British Parliament to tax the unrepresented American colonies, a right the colonists strenuously and successfully denied.
The news of the firm attitude of the Bay State colonists arrived in England early in March, 1774, and Lord North's Government, urged by the King, first deprived Boston of her privileges as a port; secondly, took away from the State of Massachusetts the whole of the executive powers granted by the charter of William III., and vested the nomination of magistrates of every kind in the King, or royally-appointed Governor; and thirdly, carried an enactment authorizing persons accused of political offences committed in Boston to be sent home to England to be tried.
These monstrous statutes provoked the most decided resistance; all the other American colonists joined with Boston, and a solemn league and covenant was entered into for suspending all commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the obnoxious acts were repealed. On the 5th of Sept., 1774, a congress of fifty-one representatives from twelve old colonies assembled in Philadelphia. The instructions given to them disclaimed every idea of independence, recognized the constitutional authority of the mother country, and acknowledged the prerogatives of the crown; but unanimously declared that they would never give up the rights and liberties derived to them from their ancestors as British subjects, and pronounced the late acts relative to the colony of Massachusetts Bay to be unconstitutional, oppressive and dangerous. The first public act of the congress was a resolution declarative of their favorable disposition towards the colony above mentioned; and, by subsequent resolutions, they formally approved the opposition it had given to the obnoxious acts, and declared that, if an attempt were made to carry them into execution by force, the colony should be supported by all America.