Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/438

Rh 424 position which he assumed was as contrary to the principles of parliamentary government as the encroaclnnents of Charles I. had been. But it was veiled in the eyes of Englishmen by the prominence given to the powe_r of the British parliament rather than to the power of the British king. Iu fact the theory of parliamentary government, like most theories after their truth has long been univer- sally acknowledged, had become a superstition. Parlia- ments were held to be properly vested with authority, not because they adequately represented the national will, but simply because they were parliaments. There were thousands of people in England to whom it never occurred that there was any good reason why a British parliament should be allowed to levy a duty on tea in the London docks and should not be allowed to levy a duty on tea at the wharves of Boston. Undoubtedly George III. derived great strength from his honest participation in this mistake. Con- tending under parliamentary forms, he did not wound the susceptibilities of members of parliament, and when at last in 1770 he appointed Lord North-—a minister of his own selection—prime minister, the object of his ambition was achieved with the concurrence of alarge body of politicians who had nothing in common with the servile band of the king's friends. As long as the struggle with America was carried on with any hope of success they gained that kind of support which is always forthcoming to a Government which shares in the errors and prejudices of its subjects. The expulsion of Wilkes from the House of Commons in 1769, and the refusal of the House to accept him as a member after his re-election, raised a grave constitutional question in which the king was wholly in the wrong ; and Wilkes was popular in London and Middlesex. But his case roused no national indignation, and when in 1774 those sharp measures were taken with Boston which led to the commencement of the American rebellion in 1775, the opposition to the course taken by the king made little way either in parliament or in the country. Burke might point out the folly and in- expedience of the proceedings of the Government. Chatham might point out that the true spirit of English government was to be representative, and that that spirit was being vio- lated at home and abroad. George II I., who thought that the ﬁrst duty of the Americans was to obey himself, had on his side the mass of unreﬂecting Englishmen who thought that the first duty of all colonists was to be useful and submissive to the mother-country. The natural dis- like of every country engaged in war to see itself defeated was on his side, and when the news of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga arrived in 1777, subscriptions of money to raise new regiments poured freely in. In March 1778 the French ambassador in London announced that a treaty of friendship and commerce had been concluded between France and the new United States of America. Lord North was anxious to resign power into stronger hands, and begged the king to receive Chatham as his prime minister. The king would not hear of it. He would have nothing to say to “ that perfidious man ” unless he would humble himself to enter the ministry as North’s subordinate. Chatham naturally refused to do anything of the kind, and his death in the course of the year relieved the king of the danger of being again overruled by too overbearing a minister. England was now at war with France, and in 1779 she was also at war with Spain. George III. was still able to control the disposition of office. He could not control the course of events. His very ministers gave up the struggle as hopeless long before he would acknowledge the true state of the case. Before the end of 1779, two of the leading members ofathe cabinet, Lords Gower and Weymouth, resigned rather than bear the GEORGE III overpower America and France together. Lord North retained oﬁice, but he acknowledged to the king that his own opinion was precisely the same as that of his late colleagues. The year 1780 saw an agitation rising in the country for economical reform, an agitation very closely though in- directly connected with the war policy of the king. The public meetings held in the country on this subject have no unimportant place in the development of the constitution. Since the presentation of the Kentish Petition in the reign of Villiam III. there had been from time to time upl1eav- ings of popular feeling against the doings of the legislature, which kept up the tradition that parliament existed in order to represent the nation. But these upheavings had all been so associated with ignorance and violence as to make it very diﬁicult for men of sense to look with displeasure upon the existing emancipation of the Ilouse of Commons from popular control. The Sacheverel riots, the violent attacks upon the Excise Bill, the no less violent advocacy of the Spanish war, the declamations of the supporters of Wilkes at a more recent time, and even in this very year the Gordon riots, were not likely to make thoughtful men anxious to place real power in the hands of the classes from whom such exhibi- tions of folly proceeded. But the movement for econo- mical reform was of a very different kind. It was carried on soberly in manner, and with a deﬁnite practical object. It asked for no more than the king ought to have been willing to concede. It attacked useless expenditure upon sinecures and unnecessary oﬁices in the household, the. only use of which was to spread abroad corruption amongst the upper classes. George III. could not bear to l-e interfered with a.t all, or to surrender any element of power which had served him in his long struggle with the Whigs. He held out for more than another year. The news of the c-ipitulation of York Town reached London on November 25, 1781. On March 20, 1762, Lord North resigned. George III. accepted the consequences of defeat. He called the marquis of Rockingham to oﬂice at the head of a ministry composed of pure 'higs and of the disciples of the late earl of Chatham, and he authorized the new ministry to open negotiations for peace. Their hands were greatly strengthened by B.odney’s victory over the French ﬂeet, and the failure of the combined French and Spanish attack upon Gibraltar; and before the end of 178;’ a pro- visional treaty was signed with America, preliminaries of peace with Franceand Spain being signed earlyin the follow- ing year. On September 3, 1783, the deﬁnitive treaties with the three countries were simultaneously concluded. “ Sir,” said the king to Mr Adams the first minister of the United States of America accredited to him, “I wish you to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late contest but what I thought. myself indispensably bound to do by the duty which I owed to my people. I will be very frank with you. I was the last to consent to the separation ; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, l have always said, as I say now, that I would be the ﬁrst to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.” Long before the signature of the treaties l'iOCl{lll_L‘ll(ln‘l died (Jilly 1, 1782). The king chose Lord Shelburne, the head of the Chatham section of the Government, to be prime minister. Fox and the followers of Rocking- ham refused to serve except under the duke of Portland, a minister of their own selection, and resigned ollice. ’.l‘he old constitutional struggle of the reign was now to be fought out once more. Fox, too weak to obtain a majority alone, coalesced with Lord N orth, and defeated Shelburne in the House of Commons on February 17, 1783. On responsibility of so ruinous an enterprise as the attempt to, April 2 the coalition took office, with Portland as nominal