Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/16

2 and of struggles, in their violence, their extent, their intensity, and their consequences, unparalleled in the history, and unequalled in the impressions left by them on the fortunes of mankind.

George III., at the time of the sudden death of his grandfather, was in his twenty-second year. He was of a tall and well-built figure, with a countenance good-natured but not handsome, and a head which, had phrenologists then existed, might have warned them, by its receding front, and consequent absence of the higher and more intellectual faculties, by a tolerable share of conscientiousness, a larger portion of veneration, vastly overbalanced by obstinacy and combativeness, of those dangers which lay in the way of such a monarch, and which were destined to shake from his crown its noblest jewel, to lop the broadest regions from his empire, and to engage him in the most frightful war against the liberties of the continent—against people struggling to free themselves from their old, decrepit, and tyrannical rulers, at a cost to his own subjects of the most unheard-of bloodshed and expense. Such were the terrors and huge calamities lurking in the narrow and retreating brain of that monarch celebrated for his piety and paternal goodness, for his morality and habits of domestic peace.

George III., yet unaware of being George III., but only imagining himself prince of Wales, with the loss of America and the French revolution still lying as embryos in the equally unimagined future, was pleasantly riding near Kew with his mother's favourite and his own, lord Bute, when a groom rode hastily up to inform him of the sudden death of the late king. George, with the coolness habitual to him, even at that age, immediately commanded the groom to inform no one that he had communicated this news to him—if necessary, to deny that he had seen him. His first action was to compel his messenger to perpetrate a piece of state policy, in common life styled a falsehood; his second, to hasten back and secure his grandfather's money. William Pitt met him and his inseparable companion, lord Bute, hurrying back to Kew to give the necessary orders for this and other purposes. The news was confirmed by Pitt, who hailed George III. by his new title. That day and the following night were spent in secret arrangements, and the next morning George presented himself before his mother, the princess-dowager, at Carlton House, where he met his council, and was then formally proclaimed. This was on the 26th of October, 1760.

The conduct of the young king, considering his shyness and the defects of his education, was, during the first days of his sudden elevation, calm, courteous, affable, and unembarrassed. "He behaved throughout," says Horace "Walpole, "with the greatest propriety, dignity, and decency." He dismissed his guards to attend on the body of his grandfather. But it was soon seen that there would be great changes in his government. Pitt waited on him with the sketch of an address to his council; but the king informed him that this had been thought of, and an address already prepared. This was sufficient for Pitt; he had long been satisfied that the favourite of mother and son, the groom of the stole, and the inseparable companion, Bute, would, on the accession of George, mount into the premiership. It is the curse of nations that princes of narrow heads and inferior capacities will, as a matter of course, choose inferior ministers. Pitt was the only man of great and commanding capacity amongst those who surrounded the throne; a man who had wrested, by persevering talent, the management of the nation from the feeble aristocratic hands which had reduced its fortunes and its fame to the lowest condition, and crowned them both with glory and power; had humiliated all its enemies, and extended, at their cost, our empire beyond all its former limits. What a mighty difference betwixt the national disgrace and debility in 1756, and the national vigour and prestigein 1760! But it was not within the intellectual range of George III. to perceive this glory and its causes, and he soon put aside the saviour and exalter of the nation, and chose men of his own calibre, and continued to choose such, till they had lost us even more than Pitt had won us—had lost us America, and our honour with it.

Lord Mahon has taken much pains to convince us that George III. was by no means deficient in intellect. Certainly, he had no lack of a certain homely kind of sense and shrewdness, such as made him a very good farmer, and afraid to lose a single sheep; but that is not the quality of mind in question. George was, and could not fail to be, from the unfortunate shape of his head, destitute of all those kingly properties of mind which are necessary in difficult crises to preserve nations, to say nothing of augmenting them. He lacked that grasp of intellect which takes in the whole horizon of causes and contingencies, and that sympathy with greatness which leads it to choose great instruments, and associate with master minds. To use the words of our greatest living poet, his mind "declined upon a lower range" of minds, and to them he trusted the fate of his empire, without a suspicion that they were incapable of directing it. The same historian says that his peculiarity of manner, his "What, whats?" and "Hey, heys!" which even his worshipper, Madame D'Arblay, has handed down to our notice, and which "Walcot so continually played upon, gave him an appearance of shallowness that was greater than it was just. But the tests of the mind of George III. are, that he lost a magnificent country by not having sense to retain its affections, and nearly ruined this country in endeavouring to prop up the worst and most imbecile governments abroad, much of this may be attributed to his narrow education operating on his limited capacity; but the obstinacy which resisted wise advice and the plainest signs of the times, still more.

On the morning of Monday, the 28th, his brother, Edward, duke of York, and lord Bute were sworn members of the privy council. It was seen at once that Bute was to be the lord of the ascendant, and the observant courtiers paid an instant homage to the man through whom all good things were to flow. The king declared himself, however, highly satisfied with his present cabinet, and announced that he wished no changes. A handbill soon appeared on the walls of the Royal Exchange expressing the public apprehensions: "No petticoat government—no Scotch favourite—no lord George Sackville!" Bute had always championed lord George, who was so bold in society and so backward in the field; and the public now imagined that they would have a, governing clique of the king's mother, her favourite, Bute, and his favourite, lord George.