Brought up among bed-chamber women and pages, in an unwholesome atmosphere of petty intrigue, and carefully kept from contact with the world, George had the failings which such a system might be expected to produce. His mother certainly succeeded in implanting in his heart religious principles which he preserved through life, and she turned him out a pure-minded and well-bred young man; but the faults in his character were confirmed. He was uncharitable in his judgments of others and harsh in his condemnation of conduct which he did not approve. His prejudices were strengthened; he put too high a value on his own opinions and was extremely stubborn. In dealing with men, he thought too much of what was due to himself and too little of what was due to others. As a lad he lacked frankness, and in later life was disingenuous and intriguing. When he was displeased his temper was sullen and resentful. He was always overcareful about money, and in old age this tendency developed into parsimony. His education was deficient; it had not been carried on steadily, and he had been allowed to indulge a constitutional inertness. Though he overcame this habit, the time which he had lost could not be made up for, and ideas which might have been corrected or enlarged by a more thorough education, remained firmly fixed in his mind.
THE EARL OF BUTE.
Among these ideas were an exaggerated conception of the royal prerogative and the belief that it was his duty as king to govern as well as to reign. His mother's constant exhortation to him, "George, be a king," fell upon willing ears, and appears to have been enforced by his tutors. A more powerful influence on the mind of the young prince than that of any of his tutors was exercised by John Stuart, Earl of Bute, his mother's chief friend and adviser. He was a fine showy man, vain of his handsome person, theatrical in his manners, pompous, slow and sententious in his speech. His private life was respectable; he had literary and scientific tastes, and a good deal of superficial knowledge. His abilities were small; he would, George's father used to say, "make an excellent ambassador in any court where there was nothing to do".[2] He lacked the steadfast self-reliance necessary to the part which he undertook to play, and had none of the dogged resolution of his royal pupil. His enemies freely accused him of falsehood; he was certainly addicted to intrigue, but he was probably too proud a man to utter direct lies. The friendship between him and the princess was close and lasting. It was generally believed that he was her paramour, but for this there is no real evidence. It would have been contrary to the character of the princess, and the assertion seems to have been a malicious scandal. George liked him, and when he was provided with a household of his own in 1756, he persuaded the king to put the earl at the head of it as his groom of the stole. Though utterly incompetent for the task, Bute instructed the prince in the duties of kingship; he encouraged him in the idea that a king should exercise a direct control over public affairs, and is said to have borrowed for him a portion of Blackstone's then unpublished Commentaries on the Laws of England in which the royal authority is magnified.
George's political system was, it is evident, largely based on Bolingbroke's essay On the Idea of a Patriot King. In this essay Bolingbroke lays down that a king who desires the welfare of his people should "begin to govern as soon as he begins to reign," that he must choose as his ministers men who "will serve on the same principles on which he intends to govern," and that he must avoid governing by a party. Such a king will unite his people, and put himself at their head, "in order to govern, or more properly subdue, all parties". This doctrine seemed specially appropriate to the state of affairs at George's accession. During the last two reigns the power of the crown had dwindled. Neither George I. nor George II. had cared for, or indeed understood, domestic politics, and the government had fallen into the hands of the whig party which became dominant at the Revolution. The whigs posed as defenders of the Hanoverian house and of the principles of 1688. Those principles limited the exercise of the prerogative, but they did not involve depriving the crown of all participation in the government. The whig party exaggerated them, and while the fortunes of Hanover and continental affairs absorbed the attention of the king, they completely usurped the government of the country. They were strong in the house of lords, and secured their position in the commons by employing the patronage of the crown, the money of the nation, and their own wealth and influence to control the borough elections. For nearly fifty years a small number of whig lords shared the government of the country among themselves. During Walpole's administration the whigs became split into sections. Several of the more powerful lords of the party had each his own following or "connexion" in parliament, composed of men bound to him by family ties, interest, or the gift of a seat. These sections, while they agreed in keeping the crown out of all part in the government, and the tories out of all share in the good things which the crown had to bestow, struggled with one another for office.
THE KING INTENDS TO RULE.
Meanwhile the tories were left out in the cold. So long as jacobitism was a danger to the state, this was not a fair cause of complaint, for many tories had corresponded with the exiled princes. By 1760, however, tories had become as loyal as whigs. George was fully determined to put an end to this state of things: he would be master in his own kingdom; he and not the whigs should govern England. He naturally rejoiced to see the tories, a large and important body of his subjects, reconciled to the throne; and as he had been brought up in tory principles, he welcomed with peculiar pleasure the support of the party of prerogative. The tories were no longer to be neglected by the crown; the whig monopoly was to be brought to an end. He did not contemplate taking political power from one party in order to vest it in another. He designed to rule independently of party; no political section was necessarily to be excluded from office, but no body of men, whether united by common principles or common interest, was henceforth to dictate to the crown. To be willing and able to carry on the government in accordance with his will was to be the sole qualification for a share in the administration. Ministers might or might not be agreed on matters of the first importance; all the agreement between them which was necessary was that each in his own sphere should act as an agent of the king's policy.
The system was not so impossible as it would be at present. The idea of the cabinet as a homogeneous body, collectively responsible to parliament, was not yet established. Government was largely carried on by ministers working more or less independently of one another. In 1760 the cabinet, an informal committee of the privy council, was an institution of a different character from that of to-day. During the last two reigns it had included, along with the ministers holding the chief political offices, whether of business or dignity, certain great court officials, and some other personages of conspicuous position whose assistance might be useful to the government. Nominally the "lords of the cabinet" were fairly numerous. They did not all take an equal share in government. The king's "most serious affairs" were directed by not more than five or six of them, who formed a kind of inner cabinet, the first lord of the treasury, the two secretaries of state, one or more of the principal supporters of the administration, and generally the lord chancellor. They discussed matters privately, sometimes settling what should be laid before a cabinet meeting, and sometimes communicating their decisions to the king as the advice of his ministers, without submitting them to the cabinet at large.[3] Outside this small inner circle the lords of the cabinet held a position rather of dignity than of power, and some of them rarely attended a cabinet meeting.[4] This arrangement was mainly due to the long predominance of Sir Robert Walpole and to the overwhelming political influence of a few great whig houses. The strife among the whigs which followed Walpole's retirement and the critical character of foreign affairs tended to increase the number of councillors who commonly took part in cabinet business.
THE CABINET.
The first cabinet of George III. as settled with reference to a meeting held on November 17, consisted of the keeper of the great seal (Lord Henley), the president of the council (Lord Granville), the two secretaries of state (Pitt and Holdernesse), the Duke of Newcastle (first lord of the treasury), Lord Hardwicke (ex-chancellor), Lord Anson (first lord of the admiralty), Lord Ligonier (master-general of the ordnance), Lord Mansfield (lord chief-justice), the Duke of Bedford (lord-lieutenant of Ireland) and the Duke of Devonshire (lord chamberlain). If Lord Halifax (president of the board of trade) pleased, he might attend to give information on American affairs; and Newcastle suggested that Legge (the chancellor of the exchequer, whose office, as finance was then largely managed by the first lord of the treasury, was of less importance than it soon became) and the "solicitor" (Charles Yorke, solicitor-general) should also be summoned.[5] Soon afterwards Bute was appointed groom of the stole to the king and entered the cabinet.[6] After 1760 the cabinet began to assume its later form; questions of the highest importance were debated and decided on in meetings of eleven or twelve councillors, and in 1761 Hardwicke complained that the king's "most serious affairs" were discussed by as many as would in earlier days have formed a whole cabinet.[7] From 1765 the existence of an inner circle becomes less distinct, though at all times a prime minister naturally takes counsel privately with the most prominent or most trusted members of his government. Non-efficient members of a cabinet appear more rarely until, in 1783, they disappear altogether. The old inner cabinet becomes expanded into a council consisting generally of high political officers, and the members, ten or twelve in number, discuss and settle the weightiest affairs of state. With the critical negotiations with France in 1796 came a new development; the prime minister, the younger Pitt, and Lord Grenville, the foreign secretary, arranged that the British ambassador should write private despatches for their information, and others of a less confidential character which might be read by the cabinet at large.[8] Here a new inner cabinet is foreshadowed. It differed from the old one: that arose from the small number who were entrusted with an actual share in the government; this, from the fact that the number of the king's confidential servants was so large that it was advisable that certain matters of special secrecy should only be made known to and discussed by two or three. The subsequent increase of the council promoted the development of an inner cabinet, and such a body is understood to have existed for many years during which cabinets have been of a size undreamt of by ministers of George III.
The solidarity of the cabinet is now secured by the peculiar functions and powers of a prime minister.[9] It was not so at the accession of George III. That there should be an avowed prime minister possessing the chief weight in the council and the principal place in the confidence of the king is a doctrine which was not established until the first administration of the younger Pitt; and though the title of prime minister had come into use by 1760, it was still regarded as invidious by constitutional purists. According to George's system he was himself to be the only element of coherence in a ministry; it was to be formed by the prime minister in accordance with his instructions, and each member of it was to be guided by his will. The factious spirit of the whigs, the extent to which they monopolised power, and the humiliating position to which they had reduced the crown, afford a measure of defence for his scheme of government. Yet it was in itself unconstitutional, for it would have made the ministers who were responsible to parliament mere agents of the king who was not personally responsible for his public acts. And it was not, nor indeed could it be, carried out except by adopting means which were unconstitutional and disastrous. It necessarily made the king the head of a party. He needed votes in parliament, and he obtained them, as the whig leaders had done, by discreditable means. If his ministers did not please him he sought support from the members of his party, "the king's friends," as they were called; and so there arose an influence behind the throne distinct from and often opposed to that of his responsible advisers.