King George II of England

“ And yet, when in 1760 George III. ascended the throne, he conspired with the Tory leaders to overthrow the great minister, “in order,” as was finely said by Grattan, “to be relieved of his superiority.” George was determined to follow his mother’s injunctions and “be king.” The royal opposition succeeded in defeating Pitt on the manner of beginning the Spanish war; and the most glorious ministry that England had ever seen was brought to an end in October, 1761. In four and a half years England had been taken from a state of extreme humiliation and made the first power in Europe. ”

“ Nevertheless, George was one of the richest men in the world—or at least he had been while on the throne, and he would be again should he ever become the reigning monarch of England. The enormous wealth which had begun to accumulate in Victoria's frugal reign had grown like a rolling snowball for over a hundred years. For the latter half century the royal investors had, wisely enough, avoided all national bonds except those of the two old republics, France and America ”

“ Had this treaty been completed, George would have appeared as the mediator of the peace of the Empire, as the champion of the rights of the princes, as the defender of the Austrian dominions, and altogether as the chief [995] power in Germany. To a certain point the interests of the people of England had been the same as that of their King. But their real enmity was against France, and under the guidance of a Whig aristocracy, they would have wished to pursue their traditional policy of opposing the Bourbons chiefly at sea. ”

“ Charles, to stop the progress of his Britannic Majesty, placed the Duke of Ventadour at the head of a prodigious army (collected from all parts of France) of near one hundred thousand men; a force, if well managed, by being divided into two or three armies, strong enough to overwhelm George at once: but numerous as this body of troops were, they came only to be spectators of the success of the King of England. Without a single blow his Majesty made himself master of Bologne, and, slipping by the French army in the night, surprised Monstrevil. ”

“ In spite of the difference between an intellectually great man and an intellectually small one, in spite too of the difference between the king who began by choosing his ministers from both parties and the king who persisted in choosing his ministers from only one, the work of pacification was accomplished by George even more thoroughly than by William.
George I. was fortunate in arriving in England when a great military struggle had come to an end. He had therefore no reason to call upon the nation to make great sacrifices. ”

“ 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 then George III. At the bottom the position which he assumed was as contrary to the principles of parliamentary government as the encroachments of Charles I. had been. But it was veiled in the eyes of Englishmen by the prominence given to the power of the British parliament rather than to the power of the British king. ”

“ From the moment the ministry became aware of his majesty's alliance to the lady just named, they took possession of their watch-tower, and determined that the new sovereign should henceforth do even as their will dictated; while the unsuspecting mind of George the Third was easily beguiled into their specious devices. In the absence of the king's beloved brother, Edward, Duke of York, (who was [28] then abroad for a short period) his majesty was assured by his ministers that no cognizance would be taken at any time of his late unfortunate amour and marriage ”

“ Descending into the arena of politics, he set to work to make himself a following, much as Newcastle or Walpole had done in a previous generation. But George, unlike those statesmen, had not to rely on bribery or borough-mongering alone. He could count on all the prestige and attraction which surrounds the crown, to draw men into his net. Some of the "King's Friends" (as his followers grew to be called) were politicians bought by pensions or titles, but many were honest supporters, who found their pleasure in displaying their loyalty to the crown. ”

“ George having mentioned the late violation of the freedom of elections, conspiracies invented to give a colour to new oppressions, infamous informers, and the state of proscription in which he supposed every honest man to be, very gravely proposed, that if king George would relinquish to him the throne of Great Britain, he would, in return, bestow upon him the title of king in his native dominions, and invite all Other states to confirm it; he likewise promised to leave to king George his succession to the British dominions secure, whenever, in due course, his natural right should take place. ”

“ If he is to be blamed because, rather than submit to the loss of the colonies, which nearly all men believed would be the end of England's greatness and prosperity, he determined to carry on the struggle, the blame must be shared by others. Had North been true to his convictions George could not have formed another administration willing to act on the same system. Had the majority of the commons refused to support the king, the constitution afforded the means of over-ruling his will. ”

“ About the end of 1733 Ward obtained a pardon from George II and returned to England. By extensive advertisement and by the accomplishment of some startling cures he soon became famous, and secured for his pill and drop an enormous sale. He enjoyed the patronage of the king, whose immediate displeasure and more lasting esteem he won by curing his dislocated thumb with a violent wrench. George allowed him an apartment in the almonry office, Whitehall, where he ministered to the poor at his majesty's expense. ”

“ So if the Prince of Wales should see fit to tread in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, he would have very different instruments from those "king's friends" whose existence and actions were so fatal to ministers in the early part of those days when George III. was king.
It is a common remark, that the institutions of England have been so far reformed in a democratic direction, that no monarch could ever expect to become powerful in that country. We think the observation unphilosophical ”

“ The nation, in general, supposed this to have arisen from his majesty's anxiety upon the fearful aspect of affairs, which was then of the most gloomy nature, both at home and abroad. Little, indeed, did the multitudes imagine the real cause; little did the private gentleman, the industrious tradesman, the worthy mechanic, or the labourer, think that their sovereign was living in splendid misery, bereft of the dearest object of his solicitude, and compelled to associate with the woman he all but detested!
Nature had not formed George the Third for a [37] king ”

“ The answer is that, especially in England, it is not brilliance or distinction of mind that win the respect of a nation. George III had many faults, but all through his reign he was an admirable representative of the general feelings of his people. And he never did a more representative act than when he gave Johnson a pension, or when he received him in the library of Buckingham House. No doubt many, though not all, of Johnson's political and ecclesiastical prejudices were very congenial to the king, but plenty of people shared George Ill's views without gaining from him an ounce of respect. ”

“ George the Third was still living, but he had been out of his mind, and blind, for some time, so that his son George, prince of Wales, had been made regent in the year 1810, and conducted the government with that title, till his father’s death, which happened in the year 1820, [187] he having reigned above fifty-nine years, when George the Fourth became king, instead of regent. ”

“ The same abject creatures—they or their kind—that had rhymed their lying verses over the dead Prince of Wales who had hated his father, now rhymed their lying verses over the dead king who had hated his son. If George the Second had been a more common man, instead of being Elector of Hanover and King of England, one might have said of him frankly enough that he was a person about as little to be admired as a man well could be who was not a coward or in the ordinary sense of the term a criminal. ”

“ Poor as he was, however, no man could be more upright. The British tried to buy him, but found him the very soul of honor. In what way he gave expression to his interest in the public welfare can be briefly told.
As we have already seen, King George, much against his will, had to submit to the repeal of the Stamp Act by Parliament. But he was not satisfied. He could never carry out his selfish scheme of personal government in England and in America if he allowed the stubborn colonists to have their way in this matter. ”

“ If they cannot maintain a majority in Parliament by the use of the patronage and influence of the crown, they must yield their places to their successful rivals; and the king, without the least hesitation, will receive as his confidential advisers to-morrow, the very men whose principles he had condemned but yesterday. Such is a king of England. He can do no wrong. ”

“ The people loved and reverenced the King of England even more than if the ocean had not rolled its waves between him and them, for at the distance of three thousand miles they could not discover his bad qualities and imperfections. Their love was increased by the dangers which they had encountered in order to heighten his glory and extend his dominion. Throughout the war the American colonists had fought side by side with the soldiers of Old England, and nearly thirty thousand young men had laid down their lives for the honor of King George. ”

“ How the Reform Bill was passed; how Slavery in our colonies was abolished; how there were Revolutions in France and Belgium; how the cholera broke out; how railways were established; and how the Houses of Parliament were burned down. As King George the Fourth left no child to succeed him, his brothers were the next heirs to the throne. The Duke of York, the second son of George the Third, died three years before George the Fourth, and left no child; so William Henry, Duke of Clarence, the third son of George the Third, now mounted the throne. ”

“ From the beginning to the close of his long reign, George III. manifested a decent, moral, and religious life, which doubtless had very beneficial effects upon society at large.
On the accession of the new king, parliament was prorogued, first to the thirteenth, and afterwards to the eighteenth, of November. In the meantime, public attention was engaged by the equipment of a large squadron of men-of-war and transports at Portsmouth, and speculations were rife as to the policy of the monarch—whether it would be favourable to war or to peace. ”

“ The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III., but rather his son, subsequently George IV., who was made Prince of Wales three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during the insanity of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the fit companion of Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and fox-hunters who drank pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman of Europe." Others, who knew him better, described him as one who never kept his word to man or woman and who lacked the most elementary virtues. ”

“ As the Government system actually was, only a national prosperity of universal and impossible sleekness could have kept the people of England much longer indifferent to the necessity for reform in almost every department of the political and social system.
Meanwhile the new King was paying his round of State visits to Ireland, to Hanover, and to Scotland. We have seen already how the royal progress to Ireland was delayed by the inconvenient occurrence of the Queen's death. George soon, however, felt it proper to put away all affectation of grief, and to pay his visit to Ireland. ”

“ There is a conviction widespread among us—his own words, perhaps, have done most to create it—that King George is inspired, as no recent predecessor has been inspired, by the conception of kingship, that his is to be no rôle of almost indifferent abstinence from the broad processes of our national and imperial development. That greater public life which is above party and above creed and sect has, we are told, taken hold of his imagination ”

“ Men who are so utterly un-English as to be "quite" frank even suggest that King George's insistence not only upon enacting the "constitutional monarch," but overplaying that rôle, has not inconsiderably undermined the solidity of the Royal principle in numerous British hearts. ”

“ He was at home the partly republican magistrate of what had once been a purely republican experiment, and among the cleaner if colder ideals of the seventeenth century. George was when he was at home pretty much what the King of the Cannibal Islands was when he was at home—a savage personal ruler scarcely logical enough to be called a despot. William was a man of acute if narrow intelligence; George was a man of no intelligence. Above all, touching the immediate effect produced, William was married to a Stuart, and ascended the throne hand-in-hand with a Stuart ”

“ III. c. 27. in case of a like descent to any of his present majesty's children, empowers the king to name either the queen, the princess dowager, or any descendant of king George II residing in this kingdom;—to be guardian and regent, till the successor attains such age, assisted by a council of regency: the powers of them all being expressly defined and set down in the several acts.-242-
III. A third attribute of the king's majesty is his perpetuity. The law ascribes to him, in his political capacity, an absolute immortality. The king never dies. Henry, Edward, or George may die ”