CHAPTER XVI

GEORGE III. AND THE PERSONAL AUTHORITY OF THE CROWN

DURING the reign of the first two Hanoverian sovereigns the direct authority of the crown had been reduced to a minimum. George II. had been unable to dispense with Walpole in 1727, and unable to retain him fifteen years later. At the end of his reign Pitt was supreme in the country, while Newcastle, by his adroit administration of patronage, "managed" the House of Commons. The combination seemed an assurance of the continuance of Whig supremacy. But the accession of George III. changed Character the political situation. The new king had been brought of George up in England, and indoctrinated from his earliest years. with lofty conceptions of the kingly office. From Blackstone's Commentaries he had learnt the legal theory of the royal prerogative, while Bolingbroke's tract on the Patriot King had given him the idea of a king standing above all parties and rallying around him the nobler instincts of the nation. He came to the throne determined to re-establish

III.

the personal authority of the crown. According to his 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 scheme would have

made the ministers who were responsible to Parliament mere agents of the king, who was not responsible for his public acts. 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

friends."

The Tory party, now purged of its Jacobite tendencies, The rallied to the support of the king in his struggle with the king's Whigs, while public feeling, grown somewhat weary of the long Whig supremacy, was disposed to welcome a reassertion of royal authority. But besides this, the king set himself to build up, by direct and indirect bribery, a body of "king's friends," who were expected to support the existing Government only in as far as it accorded with the royal policy. By cutting down his personal expenses the king was able to supply large sums for the purchase of votes, while the exercise of royal patronage gave to the ministers of the crown various other methods of securing support.

The Whig party included most of the great nobles, who The Whigs. by their control of "pocket-boroughs" were able to "pack" the House of Commons with their nominees. In the eighteenth century two-thirds of the members of the Lower House were nominated, the majority of them by Whig patrons. If the Whig party could hold together, it occupied an impregnable position; but the king calculated on disunion among his opponents, and the event proved that his calculations were well founded.

In 1760 the Whigs were in a majority in the House of Lords, which at this time numbered about two hundred. But more than a hundred fresh peerages were created during the reign of George III., and the House had become pre

1 Hunt, Political History of England.

Lord Bute.

The Grenville and Rockingham ministries.

dominantly Tory by the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The King's first object was to secure the control of the appointment of ministers, which had been almost entirely lost by the earlier Hanoverian kings.

He opened the campaign immediately on his accession by introducing Lord Bute into the Cabinet as his representative. Within a few months Bute's intrigues compelled Pitt to resign, and Newcastle was driven out of office six months later. But Bute proved himself quite incapable of carrying on the work of government, and early in 1763 he gave place to George Grenville, who was supported by a section of the Whigs. Grenville's short period of office was notable for the beginning of the controversy with the American Colonies and the first appearance of the strenuous and disreputable figure of Wilkes. Both these matters will be more conveniently dealt with later.

a

George III. and Bute appear to have thought that Grenville would prove to be a minister amenable to royal influence. But they soon discovered that they were mistaken, and within less than three years the king accepted 1766-1 16 Whig ministry under Lord Rockingham as a way of escape from Grenville's dictation. If Rockingham could have secured the co-operation of Pitt, he might have established a ministry strong enough to withstand the intrigues of the king; but Pitt, in what Lecky has described as "the most disastrous incident of his career," refused to join the Rockingham ministry. A year later he became a member of the Duke of Grafton's composite Cabinet, but his transfer to the House of Lords as Earl of Chatham, and his long illness immediately after, deprived him of all influence. over the policy of the ministry. The Grafton ministry, like a water-logged vessel, laboured on wearily for four

years, till it fell to pieces. Its condemnation stands written in the Letters of Junius and in Burke's great pamphlet, Thoughts of the Cause of the Present Discontents. In 1770 Lord Lord North became Prime Minister, with George III. as 1770-1782. the actual leader of the policy of the ministry.

North,

contro

The divided condition of the Whig party enabled the The king to retain Lord North in office for twelve years. The American chief event of these years was the outbreak of war with versy. the American colonies. In many ways this war may be regarded as a continuation, under new conditions, of the Parliamentary struggle of the seventeenth century. In both cases a self-opinionated and obstinate sovereign was standing for legal right against constitutional usage; in both cases the demand for "taxation by consent was mixed up with other grievances; in both cases obstinacy on one side was met by violence on the other, and so the sword was called in to sever the tangled knot. The sympathy of a large section of the people at home was with the American colonies in their resistance to Lord North and the king. Lord Chatham himself supported their claims till the intervention of France reawakened ancient national animosities.

It was not till 1780 that the various sections of the Whig party were able to unite. In that year a great Yorkshire petition for economical reform, the passing of a resolution proposed by Dunning in the Commons, asserting "that the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished," and a Reform Bill, brought forward by the Duke of Richmond, all served to show the growing discontent of the country. In March 1782 Lord North was forced to resign, and Lord Rockingham formed his second ministry, with Shelburne, who had succeeded Lord Chatham, as leader of a section of the

Lord

party, and Fox as Secretaries of State, and Burke as Paymaster of the Forces.

Lord Rockingham tried, in a series of measures, to Rockingham's restrict the power of the crown over the House of ministry, Commons. By the Contractors Act persons acting as

1782.

The

Coalition

Fox and

North.

underwriters for Government loans were disqualified from sitting in Parliament—the grant of a share in war loans having been one of the indirect forms of bribery with which the ministers of the crown had been able to secure support. The Civil List Act abolished a number of offices in the royal patronage, and brought the Secret Service Fund under Parliamentary control. It also ensured the publicity of all crown pensions by a provision that they were to be paid through the Exchequer.

On Rockingham's death, in July 1782, Shelburne became ministry of Prime Minister, and Fox and Burke left the ministry, which was joined by the younger Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In less than a year the section of the Whigs that looked to Fox as their leader joined with Lord North to overthrow Shelburne and form the notorious Coalition ministry. Public feeling was outraged at so unnatural a combination, and by a most unconstitutional use of his personal influence1 the king was able to secure the rejection of Fox's India Bill in the House of Lords, whereupon he dismissed the ministry and invited Pitt to form an

1 The king wrote on a card: "His Majesty allows Earl Temple to say that whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as an enemy; and if these words were not strong enough, Earl Temple might use whatever words he might deem stronger and more to the purpose.' On the day on which the bill was rejected by the House of Lords, the Commons resolved, "That to report any opinion, or pretended opinion, of His Majesty upon any bill or other proceeding, depending in either House of Parliament, with a view to influence the votes of the members, is a high crime and misdemeanour, derogatory to the honour of the crown, a breach of the fundamental privileges of Parliament, and subversive of the Constitution."