It had been Chatham's hope that, when the Duke of Grafton resigned, the King would be compelled to dissolve Parliament; but the King, on his side, was determined not to make an appeal to the country, which he was well aware would return an adverse majority and so compel him to receive the Whig families back into power. "I will have recourse to this," he said, laying his hand on his sword, "sooner than yield to a dissolution." In his hour of difficulty George turned to North, who came to his assistance, and formed a ministry, for which service the King was grateful, until many years later North coalesced with Fox. He bestowed upon him the posts of Ranger of Bushey Park, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, with a most acceptable stipend, and promised to bestow the Order of the Garter upon him, "which I shall do with the greater pleasure as I never have had any intimation from you that it is an honour you are in the least ambitious of."[97] He also expressed a desire in September, 1777, to discharge out of his Privy Purse his Prime Minister's debts. "Having paid the last arrears on the Civil List, I must now do the same for you," he wrote. "I have understood, from your hints, that you have been in debt ever since you settled in life. I must therefore insist that you allow me to assist you with £10,000, or £15,000, or £20,000, if that will be sufficient. It will be easy for you to make an arrangement, or at proper times to take up that sum. You know me very ill if you think not that, of all the letters I ever wrote you, this one gives me the greatest pleasure; and I want no other return but your being convinced that I love you as well as a man of worth, as I esteem you as a minister. Your conduct at a critical moment I can never forget."[98]
The King took for his part the management of the House of Commons, and it was work that suited his capabilities. It has already been mentioned that at his accession he began to study public business, and so far as the details were concerned he made great progress. "He knew all about the family histories and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. He knew the whole Army list; and all the facings and the exact number of buttons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked hats, pigtails and gaiters in his army. He knew the personnel of the Universities; what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen; he knew the etiquette of his own and his grandfather's Courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of ministers, secretaries, embassies, audiences; the smallest page in the ante-room or the meanest helper in the kitchen or stables. These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and he learned."[99] This, however, by no means exhausts the list of his qualifications. Not the most scrupulous electioneering agent knew more tricks than he, or was better acquainted with the figures of the voting in all the constituencies, or the names and views of likely candidates.
George III reduced bribery to a fine art, and, parsimonious as he was in his own affairs, he had no hesitation in buying the patron of a borough or in paying the debts of a man who was willing to stand as the "King's Friend" at the next election. "If the Duke of Northumberland requires some gold pills for the election, it would be wrong not to give him some assistance," he wrote to North before the Middlesex election in 1779. North declared that the expenses of election in 1779, 1780 and 1781, paid for by Government amounted to £53,000, and that the preceding general election cost £50,000 in addition to pensions of the annual value of £15,000! Enormous as was the Civil List, it could not support these outlays in addition to its regular expenses with which it was charged; and soon there was presented the strange spectacle of a House of Commons being invited to make good the deficit that had been caused chiefly by the bribes given to or for members of its body. On February 28, 1770, Lord North asked Parliament to discharge the King's debts, which amounted to £513,511, and although this sum was voted, it was only after a heated debate. The King was horrified to learn that Dowdeswell in the House of Commons and Rockingham in the House of Lords had moved that particulars of each expense should be specified, and that the papers might distinguish under which administration each debt had been incurred. Burke and Grenville supported the motion in the Commons, and in the Lords Chatham made a rousing speech that voiced the feelings of the nation. What had been done with the money, he wanted to know, that there should be this great deficit? The King had built no palaces, he had not lavished great sums on pictures or statuary, he had not rewarded distinguished soldiers and sailors with large pensions; the expenses of his household were, comparatively speaking, small, and the price of commodities was lower than in the preceding reign, and, although his Majesty was not illiberal in his charities, the outlay in this direction had certainly not impoverished him. No, he concluded, the money had been devoted to the support of sinecure posts to be held by minor politicians and in other ways to pervert the honesty of Parliament.
The King, regarding himself as above criticism, was greatly incensed by this speech, and his anger was increased in the following year when Sir Edward Astley moved for a return of pensions granted since the commencement of the Parliament then sitting. "I cannot help expressing some surprise," he wrote to Lord North on April 5, 1770, "at seeing Lieutenant-General Conway's name in support of Sir Edward Astley's motion, which is so antiquated an Opposition's point, but which no candid man could be supposed to adopt."[100] It was, therefore, with great reluctance that in May, 1770, he applied again, through Lord North, for another grant. Further delay was impossible, however, for even his household bills were unpaid and his servants' wages were six quarters in arrears. North asked for £600,000 to settle pressing demands and an increase to the Civil List of £100,000 a year. The request again provoked much candid criticism. Fox taunted the Prime Minister with the pledge he had given when he was in office in 1769 that no such demand should be made again; and other members pointed out that in the accounts the pensions amounted to £438,000, that there were items of £171,000 and £114,000 for secret service, and that furthermore the accounts very obviously had been falsified. The grant was eventually made, but when Sir Fletcher Norton, the Speaker of the House of Commons, presented the Civil List Bill to the King, he made a speech. "Your Majesty's faithful Commons have granted a great sum to discharge the debt of the Civil List; and considering that whatever enables your Majesty to support with grandeur, honour and dignity, the crown of Great Britain, in its true lustre, will reflect honour on the nation, they have given most liberally, even in these times of danger and difficulty, taxed almost beyond ability to bear; and they have now granted to your Majesty an income far exceeding your Majesty's highest wants, hoping that what they have given cheerfully, your Majesty will spend wisely." The "King's Friends" voiced their indignation at this address, but Fox moved "that the Speaker did express, with just and proper energy, the zeal of the House for the support of the honour and dignity of the Crown in circumstances of great public charge," and he carried the House with him in a vote of thanks to Sir Fletcher Norton.
After this stern rebuke, even George III had not courage enough to apply again to Parliament, but as the lavish corruption continued, money had to be found, and to provide for his master's necessities, North sacrificed his financial reputation. In 1781 he raised a loan of £12,000,000 upon terms so liberal as to give the bondholders a return of ten per cent., but instead of following the usual course of inviting bankers to become subscribers, he divided the much desired stock among the supporters of the Government in both Houses, who were thus handsomely rewarded for their services. This was so disgraceful a proceeding that even a servile House of Commons could not overlook it, and the transaction was undoubtedly one of the causes that contributed to North's overthrow in the following year.[101]
No scruple as to kingly dignity restrained George III from endeavouring to profit by the glamour that surrounds the throne. "I am sorry to find the Attorney-General (Thurlow) rather retracts. I feel the propriety of keeping him in his present situation; and if any kindness from me on Wednesday can effect it, you may rest assured he shall be got into thorough good temper," he wrote to North on June 7, 1774; and on another day, "The last division was nearer than some persons will have expected, but not more than I thought. I hope every engine will be employed to get those friends that stayed away last night to come and support on Monday. I wish a list could be prepared of those who went away, and those that deserted to the minority. That would be a rule for my conduct in the Drawing-room to-morrow."[102] "I am so desirous that every man in my service should take part in the Debate on Tuesday," he wrote again on January 7, 1770, "that I desire you will very strongly press Sir G. Elliot and any others that have not taken a part last session. I have no objection to your adding that I have particularly directed you to speak to them."[103] "I consent," he wrote on April 21, 1775, "to Sir Watkin Williams (Wynn) being Lieutenant of Merioneth, if he means to be grateful, otherwise favours granted to persons in opposition is not very political."[104]
George made it quite clear that to attack the Government or vote against it was regarded by him as a personal insult, and he was determined that no man should do so with impunity. "Lord North's attention in correcting the impression I had that Colonel Burgoyne and Lieutenant-Colonel Harcourt were absent yesterday is very handsome to those gentlemen, for I certainly should have thought myself obliged to have named a new Governor in the room of the former, and to have removed the other from my Bedchamber,"[105] he wrote on March 12, 1772, in reference to a division on the Royal Marriage Act; and when the Prime Minister suggested that Chatham's pension should be settled in reversion on his younger son, William Pitt: "The making Lord Chatham's family suffer for the conduct of their father is not in the least agreeable to me," he replied, on August 9, 1775. "But I should choose to know him to be totally unable to appear again on the public stage before I agree to any offer of that kind, lest it should wrongly be construed into a fear of him; and indeed his political conduct the last winter was so abandoned, that he must, in the eyes of the dispassionate, have totally undone all the merit of his former conduct. As to any gratitude to be expected from him or his family, the whole tenor of their lives has shown them void of that most honourable sentiment. But when decrepitude or death puts an end to him as a trumpet of sedition, I shall make no difficulty in placing the second son's name instead of the father's, and making up the pension £3,000."[106]
The truth is that George III was vindictive, though he would have been the last to admit this, for never doubting he was always in the right, he was confident that what to others seemed revenge, was actually only legitimate punishment meted out to the wrong-doer. "He has a kind of unhappiness in his temper, which, if it be not conquered before it has taken too deep a root, will be the source of frequent anxiety," Lord Waldegrave had written when he was the royal Governor. "Whenever he is displeased, his anger does not break out with heat and violence, but he becomes sullen and silent, and retires to his closet, not to compose his mind by study and contemplation, but merely to indulge the melancholy enjoyment of his own ill-humour. Even when the fit is ended, unfavourable symptoms too frequently return, which indicate that on certain occasions his Royal Highness has too correct a memory."[107] This serious blemish lasted all the days of his life, and was noticeable particularly in his attitude towards Chatham and, later, towards Fox.
"How many Secretaries of State have you corresponded with?" the King once asked an ex-Governor of Gibraltar. "Five, Sire," was the reply. "You see my situation. The trade of politics is a rascally business. It's a trade for a scoundrel, and not for a gentleman." So George III unconsciously passed judgment on himself, for it is clear that he had much to do with making politics a trade. Reflect upon the treatment he meted out to Rockingham, as upright a statesman who could be found in the three kingdoms, whose dismissal was chiefly due to the fact that he was too honest. "Rockingham had a way of listening to a questionable proposal that was more alarming to George III even than the eloquence of Pitt or the lengthiness of Grenville."[108]