A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

The King was not lucky in his first act of sovereignty. In his speech at the opening of Parliament on November 18, 1760, he used a form of words which he, and some of those who advised him, evidently believed to be eminently calculated to advance his popularity. "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton," the King said; and the words would seem to suggest such an intimacy of association between the King and the kingdom as must needs knit the hearts of ruler and of ruled more closely together. Yet the choice of words gave offence in certain quarters, and for two quite distinct reasons. Many of the adherents and admirers of the late King—for even George the Second had his admirers—were indignant at the contrast which the new King seemed deliberately to draw between himself and his grandfather. In accentuating the fact that he was born and bred in England, George the Third appeared by imputation to be casting a slur upon the German nature and German prejudices of George the Second. This boast, however much it might offend the feelings of the friends of the late King, was not at all calculated to affect the mass of the public, who had little love for George the Second, and whose affection for the new King was based mainly on the hope and the assumption that he would prove to be as unlike the old King as possible. But there was another interpretation to be put upon the royal words which was likely to cause a wider impression and a wider hostility. It would seem that some of the King's advisers wished him to write that he gloried in the name of Englishman; it would even seem that the King had actually used this word in the written draft of his speech. {23} Lord Bute, it was said, had struck out the word "Englishman," and had induced the King to accept the word "Briton" as a substitute. The difference would not be quite without moment now: it appeared very momentous to many then, who read in the word chosen a most convincing proof of the Scotch influence behind the throne. The King's pride in styling himself a Briton was taken to be, what indeed it was, evidence of his affection for the Scotch peer who had been so lately sworn into his Privy Council; and the alarm and indignation of all who resented the Scotch influence was very great. The Duke of Newcastle in especial was irritated by the use of the word "Briton," and the evidence it forced upon him of his own waning influence and the waxing power of Bute. He even went so far as to wish that some notice should be taken of the "royal words" both in the motion and the address; but in the end he and those who thought with him felt that they must submit and stifle their anger for the time, and so the King, unchallenged, proclaimed himself a Briton.

Whatever else George had learned in the days of his tutelage, he had learned to form an ideal of what a king should be and a determination to realize that ideal in his own rule. The old idea of the personal authority of the sovereign seemed to be passing away, to be dropping out of the whole scheme and system of the English Constitution along with the belief in the theory of the Divine right of kings. The new King, however, was resolved to prove that he was the head of the state in fact as well as in name; that with his own hands he would restore to himself the power and authority which his grandfather and his great-grandfather had allowed unwisely to slip through their fingers. The difficulties in the way of such an enterprise might very well have disheartened any being less headstrong, any spirit less stubborn. There were forces opposed to him that seemed to overmatch his puny purpose as much as the giants overmatched the pigmy hero of the nursery tale. St. George in the chivalrous legend had but one dragon to destroy; the young royal St. George set himself {24} with a light heart to attack a whole brood of dragons—the dragons of the great Whig party.

When George the Third came to the throne the government of the country was entirely in the hands of the Whigs. The famous stately Whig Houses, the Houses of Cavendish, of Russell, of Temple, of Bentinck, of Manners, of Fitzroy, of Lennox, of Conway, of Pelham, of Wentworth, were as little subservient to the sovereign as the great Frankish nobles who stood about the throne of the Do-nothing kings. The Tory party was politically almost non-existent. No Tory filled any office, great or little, that was at the disposal of the Whigs, and the Whigs had retained their ascendency for well-nigh half a century. Jacobitism had been the ruin of the Tory cause. All Tories were not Jacobites, but, roughly speaking, all Jacobites were Tories, and there were still, even at the date of George's accession, stout-hearted, thick-headed Tory gentlemen who believed in or vaguely hoped for a possible restoration of a Stuart prince. It is curious to find that, though the Whig ranks stood fast in defence of the House of Hanover, had made that House, and owed their ascendency to their loyalty to that House, the latest Hanoverian sovereign not only disliked them, but dealt them blow after blow until he overthrew their rule. The Tories, who sighed for a Stuart prince over the water, suddenly found to their astonishment that they had a friend in the Hanoverian Guelph, whose name they hated, whose right to the throne they challenged, and whose authority they derided, when they dared not despise.

[Sidenote: 1761—The corrupt methods of the Whig party]

It cannot be denied that the Whigs had often abused, and more than abused, the privileges which their long lease of power had given to them. All political parties ruled by corruption during the last century. The Whig was not more corrupt than the Tory, but it can hardly be maintained that he was less corrupt. The great Whig Houses bought their way to power with resolute unscrupulousness. A majority in either House was simply a case of so much money down. The genius of Walpole had secured his own pre-eminence at the cost of the almost total degradation {25} of the whole administrative system of the country. When George the Third came to the throne the Whigs were firmly established in a powerful league of bigotry and in tolerance, cemented by corruption, by bribery, by purchase of the most uncompromising, of the basest kind. George the Third had fostered through youthful years of silence those strong ideas of his own about the importance of the kingly office which he was now to proclaim by his deeds. In the way of those strong ideas, in the way of the steadfast determination to be King in fact as well as in name, stood the great Whig faction, flushed with its more than forty years' debauch of power, insolent in the sense of its own omnipotence. George was resolute to show that the claim to omnipotence was a sham, and, to do him justice, he succeeded in his resolve.

At the head of the Whig party in the House of Lords was the Duke of Newcastle. At its head in the House of Commons was William Pitt. These two ministers seemed fixed and irremovable in their supreme authority. While Newcastle lavished the money of the state in that spacious system of bribery which welded the party into so formidable a mass, it was the proud privilege of Pitt to illuminate its policy by his splendid eloquence at home and by the splendor of his enterprises abroad. Both the ministers were an enormous expense to the country. Newcastle never counted the cost so long as there was a county member to be bought or a placeman to be satisfied. Pitt never counted the cost so long as he could add another trophy of victory to the walls of Westminster Abbey and inscribe another triumph on England's roll of battles. The sordid skill of Newcastle and the dazzling genius of Pitt seemed between them to make the Whig party invulnerable and irresistible. There was no opposition in Upper or Lower House; there had been for many years no hint of royal opposition. Everything promised a long continuance of the undisputed Whig sway when suddenly the secret determination of a young King and the secret instigations of a Scotch peer dissipated the stately fabric that had endured so long.

{26}

The fixed purpose of Lord Bute was to get rid of Pitt. The fixed purpose of Lord Bute created the fixed purpose of the King, and the hours of Pitt's administration were numbered. After a season of rare glory, of resplendent triumph, Pitt found himself face to face with a formidable coalition of interests against him, a coalition of interests none the less formidable because it was headed by a man for whose attainments, opinions, and ability Pitt must have felt, and scarcely concealed, the greatest contempt. Pitt had not made himself an object of personal affection to those with whom he was brought into immediate contact. In the time of his supremacy he had carried himself with a haughty arrogance, with an austere disdain which had set the smaller men about him raging in secret antagonism. The King, driven on by his own dreams of personal authority, disliked the great minister. Bute, drunk with the wild ambitions of a weak man, seems to have believed that in succeeding to Pitt's place he could also succeed to Pitt's genius. Pitt soon became aware of the strength of the cabal against him. While some of his colleagues were disaffected, others were almost openly treacherous. Bute's manner waxed more arrogant in Council. The King's demeanor grew daily cooler. The great question of war or peace was the question that divided the Cabinet. On a question of war or peace Bute triumphed and Pitt fell.

Pitt was all for carrying on the war, which had thus far proved so successful for the British flag. But Pitt was not powerfully supported in his belief. If he had his brothers-in-law James Grenville and Lord Temple on his side, he had ranged against him a powerful opposition formed by Henry Fox and George Grenville, by Lord Hardwicke and the Duke of Bedford. On the side of the peace party Bute ranged himself, bringing with him all the enormous weight that his influence with the King gave him. The case of the peace party was a simple, straight-forward case. Why, they asked, should we continue to fight? Our sweet enemy France is on her knees and ready to accept our terms. Let us enforce those terms and make {27} a triumphant peace instead of further bleeding our exhausted treasury in the prosecution of a war from which we have now nothing more to gain. Chance gave the peace party their opportunity. Pitt had become cognizant of the treaty between France and Spain known as the "Family Compact," the secret treaty which we have already fully described, by which the two Bourbon princes agreed to make common cause against England. Pitt straightway proposed that the hostile purposes of Spain should be anticipated by an immediate declaration of war against Spain and the immediate despatch of a fleet to Cadiz. Bute promptly opposed the proposal in the Cabinet, and carried the majority of the Council with him in his opposition. Pitt instantly resigned.

[Sidenote: 1761—Pitt's probity]