Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/437

Rh of George II. The resistance to the invasion of the young Pretender in 1715, the peace of Aix-la—Chapelle in 1748, the great war ministry of Pitt at the close of the reign, did not receive their impulse from him. He had indeed done his best to exclude Pitt from office. He disliked him on account of his opposition in former years to the sacriﬁces demanded by the lIanoverian connexion. When in 1756 Pitt became secretary of state in the Devonshire adminis- tration, the King bore the yoke with difﬁculty. Early in the next year he complained of Pitt’s long speeches as l-zing above his comprehension, and on April 5, 1757, he dismissed him, only to take him back shortly after, when l‘itt, coalescing with Newcastle, became master of the situation. Before Pitt’s dismissal George II. had for once an opportunity of placing himself on the popular side, though, as was the case of his grandson during the American war, it was when the popular side happened to be in the wrong. In the true spirit of a martinet, he wished to see Admiral Byng executed. Pitt urged the wish of the House of Commons to have him pardoned. “Sir,” replied the king, “you have taught me to look for the sense of my subjects in another place than in the House of Com- mons.” When George II. died in 1760, he left behind him a settled understanding that the monarchy was one of the least of the forces by which the policy of the country was directed. To this end he had contributed much by his disregard of English opinion in 1743; but it may fairly be added that, but for his readiness to give way to irresistible adversaries, the struggle might have been far more bitter and severe than it was. Of the connexion between Hanover and England in this reign two memorials remain more pleasant to contemplate than the records of parliamentary and ministerial intrigues. With the support of George II., amidst the derision of the English fashionable world, the Hanover-ian Handel produced in England those masterpieces which have given delight to millions, whilst the foundation of the university of (hittingen by the same king opened a door through which English political ideas afterwards penetrated into Germany. George II. had three sons,—Frederick Louis (1707— 17-31); George “'illiam (1717—1718); and Vt'illiam Augus- tus, duke of Cumberland (1721—1765); and five daughters, Anne 1709—1759), married to William, prince of Orange, 173i; Amelia Sophia Eleonora (1711—1786); Elizabeth Caroline (1713-1757); Mary (1723—1772), married to Frederick, landgrave of Hesse Cassel, 1740 ; Louisa (1721—1751), married to Frederick \‘., king of Denmark, 1713.  GEORGE III. (George ll’illiam Frederick, 1738–1820), born 4th June 1738, was the son of Frederick prince of \Vales and the grandson of George II., whom he succeeded in 1760. After his father’s death in 1751 he had been educated in seclusion from the fashionable world under the care of his mother and of her favourite counsellor the earl of Bute. He had been taught to revere the maxims of Bolingbroke’s “ Patriot King,” and to believe that it was his appointed task in life to break the power of the Whig houses resting upon extensive property and the inﬂuence of patronage and corruption. That power had already been gravely shaken. The Whigs from their incompetency were obliged when the Seven Years’ War broke out to leave its management in the hands of William Pitt. The nation learned to applaud the great war minister who succeeded where others had failed, and whose immaculate purity put to shame the ruck of lnrterers of votes for places and pensions. In some sort the work of the new king was the continuation of the work of Pitt. But his methods were very different. He did not appeal to any widely spread feeling or prejudice ; nor did he disdain the use of the arts which had maintained his opponents in power. The patronage of the crown was to be really as well as nominally his own ; and he calculated, not without reason, that men would feel more flattered in accepting a place from a king than from a minister. The new Toryism of which he was the founder was no recur— rence to the Toryism of the days of Charles II. or even of Anne. The question of the amount of toleration to be accorded to Dissenters had been entirely laid asleep. The point at issue was whether the crown should be replaced in the position which George I. might have occupied at the beginning of his reign, selecting the ministers and inﬂuenc- ing the deliberations of the cabinet. For this struggle George III. possessed no inconsiderable advantages. With an inflexible tenacity of purpose, he was always ready to give way when resistance was really hopeless. As the first English-born sovereign of his house, speaking from his birth the language of his subjects, he fouan a way to the hearts of many who never regarded his predecessors as other than foreign intruders. The contrast, too, be- tween the pure domestic life which he led with his wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg—Strelitz, whom he married in 1761, and the habits of three generations of his house, told in his favour with the vast majority of his subjects. Even his marriage had been a sacriﬁce to duty. Soon after his accession he had fallen in love with Lady Sarah Lennox, and had been observed to ride morning by morning along the Kensington Road, from which the object of his aﬂ'ec- tions was to be seen from the lawn of Holland House making hay, or engaged in some other ostensible employ- ment. Before the year was over Lady Sarah appeared as one of the queen’s bridesmaids, and she was herself married to Sir Charles Bunbury in 1762. At ﬁrst everything seemed easy to him. Pitt had come to be regarded by his own colleagues as a minister who would pursue war at any price, and in getting rid of Pitt in 1761 and in carrying on the negotiations which led to the peace of Paris in 1762, the king was able to gather round him many persons who would not be willing to acquiesce in any permanent change in the system of government. With the signature of the peace his real difficulties began. The Whig houses, indeed, were divided amongst themselves by personal rivalries. But they were none of them inclined to let power and the advantages of power slip from their hands without a struggle. For some years a contest of inﬂu- ence was carried on without dignity and without any worthy aim. The king was not strong enough to impose upon parliament a ministry of his own choice. But he gathered round himself a body of dependants known as the king’s friends, who were secure of his favour, and who voted one way or the other according to his wishes. Under these circumstances no ministry could possibly be stable ; and yet every ministry was strong enough to impose some con- ditions on the king. Lord Bute, the king‘s ﬁrst choice, resigned from a sense of his own incompetency in 1763. George Grenville was in oﬂice till 1765; the marquis of Rockingham till 1766 ; Pitt, becoming earl of Chatham, till illness compelled him to retire from the conduct of affairs in 1767, when he was succeeded by the duke of Grafton. But a struggle of interests could gain no real strength for any Government, and the only chance the king had of effect- ing a permanent change in the balance of power lay in the possibility of his associating himself with some phase of strong national feeling, as Pitt had associated himself with the war feeling caused by the dissatisfaction spread by the weakness and ineptitude of his predecessors. Such a chance was offered by the question of the right to tax America. The notion that England was justiﬁed in throwing on America part of the expenses caused in the late war was popular in the country, and no one adopted it more pertinaciously than George III. At the bottom the