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The king's influence during Lord North's

from his post, and the king, appreciating the personal devotion of his minister, rewarded his zeal and fidelity with a munificent present from the privy purse.1

He

The king's correspondence with Lord North2 gives us a remarkable insight into the relations of his Majesty with that minister, and with the government of the ministry. country. Not only did he direct the minister in all important matters of foreign and domestic policy, but he instructed him as to the management of debates in Parliament, suggested what motions should be made or opposed, and how measures should be carried. reserved to himself all the patronage, he arranged the entire cast of the administration,-settled the relative. places and pretensions of ministers of state, of law officers, and members of his household,―nominated and promoted the English and Scotch judges,-appointed and translated bishops, nominated deans, and dispensed other preferments in the church.3 He disposed of military governments, regiments, and commissions; and himself ordered the marching of troops. He gave or refused titles, honours, and pensions. All his directions were peremptory: Louis the Great himself could not have been more royal :- he enjoyed the consciousness of power, and felt himself "every inch a king."

But what had been the

1 The king, in his letter to Lord North, says: "Allow me to assist you with 10,000Z., 15,000Z., or even 20,000, if that will be sufficient." -Lord Brougham's Life of George III.; Works, iii. 18. Mr. Adolphus states, from private information, that the present amounted to 30,000Z.

2 Appendix to Lord Brougham's Life of Lord North; Works, iii. 67.

3 Wraxall's Mem., ii. 148. Much to his credit, he secured the ap

result of twenty years of

pointment of the poet Gray to the professorship of Modern History at Cambridge, 8th March, 1771.

4 25th October, 1775: "On the receipt of your letter, I have ordered Elliott's dragoons to march from Henley to Hounslow."

5 "We must husband honours," wrote the king to Lord North on the 18th July, 1777, on refusing to make Sir W. Hamilton a privycouncillor.

-

kingcraft? Whenever the king's personal influence had Results of been the greatest, there had been the fiercest turbulence the king's policy. and discontent among the people, the most signal failures in the measures of the government, and the heaviest disasters to the state. Of all the evil days of England during this king's long reign, the worst are recollected in the ministries of Lord Bute, Mr. Grenville, the Duke of Grafton, and Lord North. Nor had the royal will, however potential with ministers,-prevailed in the government of the country. He had been thwarted and humbled by his parliaments, and insulted by demagogues: parliamentary privilege, which he had sought to uphold as boldly as his own prerogative, had been defied and overcome by Wilkes and the printers: the liberty of the press, which he would. have restrained, had been provoked into licentiousness; and his kingdom had been shorn of some of its fairest provinces.1

ham minis

On the retirement of Lord North, the king submitted, Rocking with a bad grace, to the Rockingham administration. try, 1782. He found places, indeed, for his own friends, but the policy of the cabinet was as distasteful to him as were the persons of some of the statesmen of whom it was composed. Its first principle was the concession of independence to America, which he had so long resisted its second was the reduction of the influence of the crown, by the abolition of offices, the exclusion of contractors from Parliament, and the disfranchisement of revenue officers." Shortly after its formation, Mr. Fox, writing to Mr. Fitzpatrick", said: "provided we can stay in long enough to give a good stout blow to the influence of the crown, I do

1 See Mr. Powys's apt quotation from Gibbon, 12th Decr., 1781; Parl. Hist., xxii. 803; Wraxall's

Mem., ii. 460.

2 Rockingham Mem., i. 452.
8 28th April, 1782.

not think it much signifies how soon we go out after."1 This ministry was constituted of materials not likely to unite,—of men who had supported the late ministry, and of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition,— or, as Mr. Fox expressed it, "it consisted of two parts, one belonging to the king, the other to the public."2 Such men could not be expected to act cordially together: but they aimed their blow at the influence of the crown, by passing the contractors' bill, the revenue officers' bill, and a bill for the reduction of offices.3 They also suffered the former policy of the court to be stigmatised, by expunging from the journals of the House of Commons, the obnoxious resolutions which had affirmed the disability of Wilkes. A ministry promoting such measures as these, was naturally viewed with distrust and ill-will by the court. So hard was the struggle between them, that the surly chancellor, Lord Thurlow, who had retained his office by the express desire of the king, and voted against all the measures of the government,-affirmed that Lord Rockingham was "bringing things to a pass where either his head or the king's must go, in order to settle which of them is to govern the country."4 The king was described by his Tory friends as a prisoner in the hands of his ministers, and represented in the caricatures of the day, as being put in fetters by his gaolers.5 In the same spirit, ministers were termed the "Regency," as if they had assumed to exercise the royal authority. In a few months, however, this ministry was on the point of breaking up,

1 Fox Mem., i. 317.

2 Fox Mem., i. 292; Lord John Russell's Life of Fox, i. 284, et seq. Lord John Russell says: "It must be owned that the composition of the Rockingham ministry was a

masterpiece of royal skill."-Ibid.
285; Wraxall's Mem., iii. 10-18.
3 See Chapter VI.
4 Fox Mem., i. 294.

5 Rockingham Mem., ii. 466.

in consequence of differences of opinion and personal jealousies, when the death of Lord Rockingham dissolved it.

burne's

1782.

Mr. Fox and his friends retired, and Lord Shelburne, Lord Shelwho had represented the king in the late cabinet, was ministry. placed at the head of the new administration; while 1st July, Mr. William Pitt now first entered office, though little more than twenty-three years of age, as Chancellor of the Exchequer.1 The secession of the popular party restored the king's confidence in his ministers, who now attempted to govern by his influence, and to maintain their position against a formidable combination of parties. Horace Walpole represents Lord Shelburne as "trusting to maintain himself entirely by the king;"2 and such was the state of parties that, in truth, he had little else to rely upon. In avowing this influence, he artfully defended it, in the spirit of the king's friends, by retorting upon the great Whig families. He would never consent, he said, "that the king of England should be a king of the Mahrattas; for among the Mahrattas the custom is, it seems, for a certain number of great lords to elect a Peishwah, who is thus the creature of the aristocracy, and is vested with the plenitude of power, while their king is, in fact, nothing more than a royal pageant." 3

By breaking up parties, the king had hoped to secure his independence and to enlarge his own influence; but now he was startled by a result which he had not anticipated. "Divide et impera” had been his maxim, and to a certain extent it had succeeded. Separation of parties had enfeebled their opposition to his government; but now their sudden combination. 2 Fox Mem., ii. 11.

1 Tomline's Life of Pitt, i. 86.

Parl. Hist., xxii. 1003,

Combina

tion of par

ties against the king.

alition."

17th and 21st Feb.,

1783.

overthrew it. When the preliminary articles of peace with America were laid before Parliament, the parties "The co- of Lord North and Mr. Fox,-so long opposed to each other, and whose political hostility had been embittered by the most acrimonious disputes,-formed a "Coalition," and outvoted the government, in the House of Commons. Overborne by numbers, the minister resigned; and the king alone confronted this powerful coalition. The struggle which ensued was one of the most critical in our modern constitutional history. The royal prerogatives on the one side, and the powers of Parliament on the other, were more strained than at any time since the Revolution. But the issue illustrated the paramount influence of the crown.

The leaders of the coalition naturally expected to succeed to power; but the king was resolved to resist their pretensions. He sought Mr. Pitt's assistance to form a government; and with such a minister, would have braved the united forces of the opposition. But that sagacious statesman, though not yet twenty-four years of age, had taken an accurate survey of the state of parties, and of public opinion; and seeing that it was not yet the time for putting himself in the front of the battle, he resisted the solicitations of his Majesty, and the advice of his friends, in order to await a more fitting opportunity of serving his sovereign. In vain did the king endeavour once more to disunite the coalition, by making separate proposals to Lord North and the Duke of Portland. The new confederacy was not to be shaken, and the king found himself at its mercy. It was long, however, before he would submit.

1 Lord Auckland's Cor., i. 9, 41. 2 Mr. Pitt was born 28th May, 1759.

* Tomline's Life of Pitt, i. 140;

3

Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt, i. 103-111; Letters of the King to Mr. Pitt, Ibid., App. ii. iii.

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