It is part of the office of caricature to assist in destroying illusions that have served their turn and become obstructive. As in Luther's time it gave important aid to the reformers in breaking the spell of the papacy, so now, when kingship broke down in Europe, the satiric pencil had much to do with tearing away the veil of fiction which had so long concealed the impotence of kings for nearly every thing but mischief.
A Caricature designed by Benjamin Franklin. (London, 1774.)
Explanation by Dr. Franklin: "The Colonies (that is, Britannia's limbs) being severed from her, Britannia is seen lifting her eyes and mangled stumps to heaven; her shield, which she is unable to wield, lies useless by her side; her lance has pierced New England; the laurel branch has fallen from the hand of Pennsylvania; the English oak has lost its head, and stands a bare trunk, with a few withered branches: briers and thorns are on the ground beneath it; the British ships have brooms at their topmast heads, denoting their being on sale; and Britannia herself is seen sliding off the world (no longer able to hold its balance), her fragments overspread with the label, Date obolum Bellisario" (Give a farthing to Belisarius).
The fatal objection to the hereditary principle in the government of nations is the importance which, to use Mr. Jefferson's words, it "heaps upon idiots." Idiot is a harsh word to apply to a person so well disposed as George III., King of England, to whom the violence of the Revolutionary period was chiefly due; but when we think of the evil and suffering from which Europe could have been saved if he had known a little more or been a little less, we can not be surprised that contemporaries should have summed him up with disrespectful brevity. But for him, so far as short-sighted mortals can discern, the period of bloody revolution could have been a period of peaceful reform. After exasperating his subjects nearly to the point of rebellion, he precipitated the independence of the American colonies, which, in turn, brought on the French Revolution, and that issued in Napoleon Bonaparte, whose sins France only finished expiating at Sedan.
It is true, there must have been in Great Britain myriads upon myriads of such heads as that of King George to make his policy possible. But suppose that, instead of placing himself at the head of the dull minds in his empire, he had given the prestige of the crown to the bright and independent souls! Suppose he had taken as kindly to Chatham, Burke, Fox, Franklin, Price, Priestley, and Barré as he did to Bute, Dr. Johnson, Addington, and Eldon!
And see how this heir to the first throne in Christendom was educated. That period has been so laid bare by diaries and correspondence that we can visit the orphan boy in his home at Carlton House, and listen to his mother, the widowed Princess of Wales, as she describes his traits and laments the defects of his training. Go back to the year 1752, and imagine a drawing-room in a royal residence. The dinner hour then had only got as far toward "to-morrow" as three in the afternoon, and therefore by early candle-light of an October evening the drawing-room may be supposed to be inhabited. The Princess of Wales, born a princess of a petty German sovereignty, still a young mother, is dressed in mourning, her husband being but a few months dead. Of the duties belonging to royalty she had no ideas except those which had prevailed from time immemorial at the court of absolute German sovereigns. Her chief care was to preserve the morals of her children, and to have her eldest son a king in reality as well as in name. "Be king" (Sois roi) were favorite words with her, often repeated in the hearing of the heir to the throne. She thought it infamy in a king to allow himself to be ruled by ministers. There is no reason to doubt that she was an honorable lady and affectionate mother. Horace Walpole's insinuation that she instilled virtuous principles into the mind of her son because she "feared a mistress," and that her intimacy with Lord Bute was a criminal intrigue, dishonors Horace Walpole and human nature, but not the mother of George III.
She has company this evening—Bubb Dodington, a gentleman of great wealth and agreeable manners, who controlled six votes in the House of Commons, and passed his life in scheming to buy a peerage with them, in which, a year before his death, he succeeded, but left no heir to inherit it. He was much in the confidence of the princess, and she had sent for him to "spend the day" with her. Dinner is over, the two ladies-in-waiting are present, and now the "children" enter to play a few games of cards with their mother before going to bed. The children are seven in number, of whom the eldest was George, Prince of Wales—a boy of fourteen, of fresh complexion, sturdy and stout in form, and a countenance open and agreeable, and wearing an expression of honesty. Human nature rarely assumes a more pleasing form than that of a healthy, innocent English boy of fourteen. He was such a boy as you may still see in the play-grounds of Eton, only he was heavier, slower, and ruddier than the average, and much more shy in company. He loved his horse, and was exceedingly fond of rural sports; but when lesson-time came—but let his mother speak on that point.
The old game of "comet" was the one which the lad usually preferred. The company play at comet for small stakes, until the clock strikes nine, when "the royal children" go to bed. Then the mother leaves her ladies, and withdraws with her guest to the other end of the room, where she indulges in a long, gossipy, confidential chat upon the subject nearest her heart—her son, the presumptive heir to the throne. To show the reader how she used to talk to confidants on such occasions, I will glean a few sentences from her conversations: