THE KING'S POLITICAL PREDOMINANCE.
In 1773 the king's political predominance was firmly established. His will was law to his ministers, and they commanded overwhelming majorities in both houses of parliament. The country was satisfied that it should be so, for the quarrel between the people and parliament had died out. It was a time of political apathy. The balance of power, which during Walpole's administration had shifted from the lords to the commons, was shifting from parliament to the crown. The house of commons was losing its spirit of independence, and the control which it should have exercised on the executive was endangered by the growth of the king's personal authority. So long as George ruled the country successfully this danger was likely to increase. He had so skilfully strengthened his position that he had triumphed over domestic agitation. The just working of the constitution was finally restored through national calamity. American discontents were to lead to a revolt which the enemies of England used as an opportunity for attacking her. Their attacks were formidable in themselves, and had the humiliating result of forcing Great Britain to give up the struggle with her revolted colonies and acknowledge their independence. George had chosen to be his own prime minister, and his policy was to suffer defeat. A period of storm was ahead, and as the ship of state passed through it, the king's personal rule, and much else besides, went overboard. All this was still far off. From 1770 to 1774 the affairs of the American colonies excited little attention in England, though, as we shall see in the next chapter, they were tending towards open revolt.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Annual Register, xiii. (1770), 72.
[83] Life of Shelburne, ii., 221; Calcraft to Chatham, March 8, 1771, MS. Pitt Papers, 25.
[84] Speeches of Barré, March 23, and Burke, April 6, 1773, Parl. Hist., xvii., 826, 836.
[85] Calcraft to Chatham, March 12, 1770, MS. Pitt Papers, 25.
[86] Letters of H. Walpole, v., 238-39 n.; Mitford, Gray and Mason Correspondence, pp. 438-39; Stephens, Memoirs of J. H. Tooke, i., 157.
[87] Calcraft to Chatham, June 10, 1770, MS. Pitt Papers, 25.
[88] The State of the Navy, MS. Admiralty Miscell., 567, R.O.