CHAPTER III

GEORGE III.: 1760-1820

Born 1738; married Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 1761.

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES TO 1789

France.

Louis xv., d. 1774.

Louis XVI.

Prussia.

Frederick the Great, d. 1786.

Fall of Pitt-The Wilkes Case-Estrangement of the American Colonies-The Middlesex Election-Junius' Letters-Loss of the American ColoniesParliamentary and Economical Reform-The Coalition-India-Ministry of the younger Pitt.

AT his accession George III. was twenty-two years of age. He was strong and well formed, his personal character was excellent, and his Character manners pleasant, but his retreating forehead gave little of George. indication of ability. His speech, too, was stammering, and his habit of repeating his questions, and of constantly saying, 'Eh? eh ?' and 'What? what?' gave the impression that his capacity was less than it really was. As a matter of fact, though he lacked the power of taking a broad view of affairs, and was wholly deficient in that elasticity of mind which enables a man to recognise his own mistakes and to take up a new position, he was an excellent man of business, had a shrewd knowledge of character, and was thoroughly desirous of doing his duty to the best of his ability. He spoke English as his mother-tongue, regarded himself as an Englishman, declared in his first speech that he 'gloried in the name of Briton,' and, as he was fond of field sports, and his likes and dislikes were those of the mass of his subjects, he bade fair to be a much more popular sovereign than either of his Hanoverian predecessors. Unfortunately, education had done little to improve George's mind, or remedy his natural deficiencies. By a singular oversight of the Whig

His Education.

ministers his instruction had been allowed to fall into the hands of men of high Tory or even Jacobite views. Books had been put into his hands which gave a completely wrong view of English history and the British Constitution, particularly of the revolution of

1688; and the result was that the new Hanoverian King of England held views which would have been much more appropriate for one of the Stuarts. This was the more serious, as many of the old Jacobites, despairing of seeing the restoration of the Stuarts, had come over to the reigning family; but as was wittily said-'While they left their king, they brought their principles with them'; and the name Tory, which under Pitt's rule had almost disappeared, was revived to designate the new converts. The rallying-place of this party was the court of the Dowager Princess of Wales. Educated at a petty German court, the Princess was ill acquainted with the British constitution, and her constant advice to her son was, 'George, be king.' Her chief adviser and friend was John Stuart, earl of Bute, a pompous and opinionated Scottish nobleman, who spoke so slowly that his words, said Charles Townshend, 'sounded like minute-guns,' and who was quite ignorant of the business of state. From the very beginning of the new reign, the effect of his influence was dreaded. A paper was posted on the Royal Exchange, 'No Petticoat Government-No Scotch Favourite— No Lord George Sackville'; and it was jestingly asked as a riddle, 'What coal should the king burn in his bedchamber-Newcastle, Scotch, or Pit?'

The object of the new king's dislike was the ascendency of the Whig revolution families, of whom Newcastle was the leader, and who had so completely engrossed power that even such able Whigs as His Political Fox and Pitt had been only grudgingly admitted to office. Views. George had read a book by Bolingbroke, called The Patriot King, in which it was advocated that a king should choose his ministers from the ablest men of all parties, and direct them to carry out a policy chosen by himself. Such a scheme had much in it to fascinate the imagination. George determined to act upon it, and as a first step to break the political power of the Whigs. To do this, however, was by no means easy; their power rested on the memory of their past services and their family connections, supplemented for close on half a century by all the arts of political patronage. For this, the rapid increase in the number of government places, due to the development of the civil and military services, had been most valuable, and still more important were the facilities for parliamentary corruption afforded by the condition of the constituencies. Many of these were boroughs which, since they had received their right to send members, perhaps in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had utterly decayed, and others had been created by the Tudors and early Stuarts, with the distinct intention of keeping them subservient to the crown. The members The Rotten for such rotten boroughs-as they were called-were nom- Boroughs. inated by the crown or some neighbouring landowner; and it was the

business of such a party-manager as Newcastle to enlist the patrons on the side of the Whigs. In 1780 it was asserted by a society called the 'Friends of the People,' that no less than 200 members of the House of Commons were returned by places having less than a hundred voters each, and also that 357 members were practically nominated by 154 patrons. So long as such forces remained in the hands of the Whigs, their position was impregnable; and they had recently shown evidence of its strength by forcing Pitt upon George II. George III., however, determined to attack it, and he hoped to have the sympathy of the discontented Whigs, of the Tories, and of the great body of the electors, who had little more influence than he had himself. In the first instance, George had recourse to the services of Lord Bute, who held that in the present condition of affairs, 'the king was a phantom, and the country under a mere oligarchy.' Two days after the accession, Bute was admitted into the privy council, and in March 1761 he succeeded Lord Holderness, Pitt's cipher-colleague, as secretary of state. With Bute in the cabinet, George was fully informed of the views and intentions of his ministers, and proceeded with great acuteness to use this knowledge for his own advantage. So long as the war lasted, however, it was impossible to dismiss Pitt, but he might be driven to resign; and before the end of the year this was effected.

During the earlier years of the war Spain had held aloof, but on the death of Ferdinand in 1759, he was succeeded by the king of Naples as

Foreign
Affairs.

Charles III.; and the new king entered into a 'family compact' with the court of France, to promote the interests of the Bourbon family. This treaty, however, was to be kept secret till the annual Plate fleet from South America had safely arrived at Cadiz ; but its effect was immediately seen when the French broke off some negotiations into which Pitt had entered. Of the reason of this, Pitt had ample information, and wished to forestall events by an instant declaration of war and the seizure of the Plate fleet. Bute, however, backed by the king, disputed Pitt's facts; Newcastle shuffled and hesitated, and other members of the Cabinet, piqued by Pitt's threat of resignation if he did not get his own way, supported Bute. Accordingly, Pitt threw up the seals, and was succeeded by George Grenville. However, as Pitt foretold, Spain, so soon as the Plate fleet was safe, declared war. Newcastle's resignation soon followed that of Pitt. Nominally, he retired because Bute refused to renew the subsidy to the king of Prussia; in reality, because he found himself without a voice in the distribution of court patronage. For years this had been in the hands of the prime minister, and had been used to consolidate the

Resignation of Pitt and Newcastle.

power of the Whigs; but George insisted, as in theory was his right, on distributing places and pensions himself. Newcastle, therefore, almost piteously complained that 'It was impossible to speak to members of the House of Commons when one did not know who had received a gratification,' and retired from office. Nothing in his official career, it was said, 'became him so well as the leaving of it'; he asked no reward for himself, and thirty years of place left him a poorer man by many thousand pounds. The road was now clear for Bute. In 1762, he Bute's became first Lord of the Treasury; George Grenville was one secretary of state, Lord Egremont, the Tory son of Sir William Wyndham, was the other, and Fox retained his post of paymaster of the forces.

Ministry.

captured.

At sea, the war against France and Spain was meanwhile carried on with considerable vigour. Martinique, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent were taken, and after a vigorously conducted siege, West Indian Havana was stormed, and three million pounds worth of Islands treasure fell into the hands of the victors. Another expedition took Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands; and several rich Plate ships also fell into our hands, one of which alone was worth £800,000. On the continent Frederick held his own well against Austria, and Ferdinand and the marquess of Granby had again distinguished themselves on the Rhine.

Bute, however, with an eagerness for peace that left him little thought for the welfare either of Great Britain or of her allies, resumed negotiations during the year; and so anxious was he lest they should Negotiations fail, that he offered concessions right and left, and even pro- for Peace. posed to give up Havana without saying a syllable about an exchange. George Grenville would not stand this, and his resignation compelled Bute to ask for an equivalent, on which the Spaniards at once gave up the valuable province of Florida. As for Prussia, no word of the interests of our good ally escaped Bute; and he would have allowed France to give up to Austria the Prussian towns she held on the Rhine, had not Frederick secured himself by negotiating a separate treaty at Hubertsburg by which he retained his dominions intact. This conduct, and the ill-advised withdrawal of his subsidy, made Frederick hate England. Eventually, by the Peace of Paris, Bute agreed to restore to the French Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia; to exchange Belle Isle for Minorca, and to retain Canada, and Cape Breton Island. We also kept Tobago, St. Vincent, Dominica, Grenada, and Florida; but we gave up Havana, as the equivalent of Florida, and Manila as a free gift. Pondicherry also was restored to the French.

Peace.

Proscrip

The peace of Paris, which, though it gave us great advantages, might have been much more favourable had Bute shown the most ordinary firmness, was very unpopular in the country, and was fiercely deUnpopularity of the nounced by Pitt, who had long ago declared that 'no peace of Utrecht should again stain the annals of England.' In these circumstances Bute found it needful to secure the help of an efficient leader in the House of Commons, and for this purpose bought the services of Fox, at the price of an immediate seat in the cabinet and the promise of an eventual peerage. Fox did his work well; the whole influence of the court was brought into play to neutralise the forces of Pitt and Newcastle; and, to show his opponents what they had to expect, George himself struck the name of the duke of Devonshire off the privy council list. These tactics secured success; and a vote of approbation of the preliminaries of the treaty was carried in the House of Commons by 319 to 65. The victory thus won, the tion of the court proceeded to the work of proscribing its opponents. Whigs. Peers who had voted against it were deprived of their lordlieutenancies, officers of their commissions in the army, and civilians of their pensions; even humbler victims were not overlooked, and woe to the unhappy exciseman or tide-waiter who had received his place from Newcastle! Happily, this wholesale dismissal of placemen, carried out on the principle of 'the spoils to the victors,' called down such execrations that it was never again imitated; and the compromise has been accepted that all posts held by members of parliament are to be vacated at a change of government, but that other placemen are to be undisturbed. For his services Fox was raised to the peerage as Lord Holland. The negotiations between Bute and Fox had been carried on by Lord Shelburne; and as Fox thought he had been taken in by him, by what was called at the time 'the pious fraud,' the result was to gain for Lord Shelburne a character for double-dealing and the deadly enmity of the Fox family, which was ultimately a matter of great importance.

Fall of Bute.

For the moment Fox's effort had been successful; but the dismissal of placemen was most unpopular, and before this storm had settled, Bute had raised another. The expenses of the war had been enormous. The national debt had increased to £139,500,000, and new taxes were imperative. It was therefore proposed to tax linen ; but this plan is said to have been rejected because Sir Francis Dashwood, the chancellor of the exchequer, could not be made to understand it The Cider sufficiently to explain it to the House; and a tax on cider took its place. It would have been hard to select an impost more unpopular or more unfair-the first, because it opened to the excise

Tax.