King George II of Great Britain

“ 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. ”

“ However, the strongest proof, the excellence of all his opinions, is the universal praise that is bestowed on his memory by all foreign historians. His name was as dear to France as it was to Great-Britain. Fortunate nations to possess a king formed by nature to make the world he governed happy! ”

“ One leading New York paper, in saying that England was doing very well as she is in that she is keeping the flame of democracy burning, remarked that "George's" sole contribution to the war was the banishment of wine from his table. I suppose the writer of this article must be intimately acquainted with the king when he can call him by his Christian name. Always Americans seem to think that Great Britain is a democracy in spite of the monarchy. We of Great Britain know that she is a democracy and a great empire because of the monarchy. ”

“ Nothing is to be apprehended from within, but what is in the power of the Representatives to prevent or overcome. In the English Revolution of 1688, a great majority of the people of Great Britain were attached to King James, and continued so for three reigns, those of William III., Anne, and George I. I have myself known old people who remember cannon being placed at Whitehall to awe the people, and prevent George the First from being insulted when he went to Parliament. ”

“ If any person, of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our Sovereign Lord George the Fourth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Son and next Heir to our Sovereign Lord King George the Third, the last King, deceased, to be right Heir to the Imperial Crown of this United Kingdom, or that he ought not to enjoy the same, here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor ”

“ Whilst the prince and his partizans were thus spreading the seeds of insurrection, and endeavouring to improve the advantages they had gained, the ministry of Great Britain, aroused to a just sense of the impending danger, took every possible measure to retard the progress of the insurrection. King George had returned to London on the 31st of August. He met with a cordial reception from the nobility and gentry in the capital, and loyal addresses were voted by all the principal cities, and towns and corporations in the kingdom. ”

“ From the foundation of the English monarchy to the age of George, Britain had never seen a painter that could rank in the first class of foreign artists. But though this great King could not create, yet he drew by his encouragements and rewards, artists from their retirements, and set them to work. No genius ever met with even a rebuke from George; merit was sure to be rewarded; and excellence in any art the certain road to fortune. Gilbert was the architect of the building, and its grandeur is well known; the President of this academy had a salary of two thousand pounds a year ”

“ Pitt in a letter to Lieutenant-governor Fauquier, of Virginia. The war ended favorably to Great Britain, and Massachusetts and other colonies looked forward with the full hope of uninterrupted prosperity. New men were at the helm of State. The old king was dead, and his grandson, the eldest October 26, 1760 son deceased Frederic, prince of Wales, had ascended the throne with the title of George III. This was the prince who ruled Great Britain sixty years, in which time was included our war for independence. ”

“ When George III. died at Windsor in 1820, and during the ten following years, Princess Victoria’s uncle, George IV., reigned as King. For the previous ten years he had reigned as Prince Regent. If his father has been misjudged, this Sovereign too has 9been misrepresented by those who have made it their business to write the political history of our country. He is generally described as being wholly bad, and devoid of any decent quality as a man and as a Sovereign. ”

“ It should weigh with every man who reads The Four Georges that King George IV. was certainly liked, and was certainly not despised, by Sir Walter Scott. In his later years the old King displayed some little kindness to his niece, the young Princess Victoria, who had succeeded his own daughter as prospective heiress of England. If he saw her but rarely, he now and again betrayed knowledge of her existence, and once took her for a drive in his pony-carriage. ”

“ During the first ten years of his reign he managed to reduce government to a shadow, and to turn the loyalty of his subjects at home into disaffection. Before twenty years were over he had forced the American colonies into revolt and independence, and brought England to what then seemed the brink of ruin. Work such as this has sometimes been done by very great men, and often by very wicked and profligate men; but George was neither profligate nor great. He had a smaller mind than any English king before him save James the Second. ”

“ Ferdinand went first (as he did also yesterday) with the Queen; then came the King with us two. I sat between the King and George Cambridge, and opposite dear Fernando. After dinner Uncle Ferdinand and my Cousins came and sat near us every now and then. Dear Ferdinand has elicited universal admiration from all parties; the King is very much pleased with him, and the Queen is quite taken with him. He is so very unaffected, and has such a distinguished appearance and carriage. They are both very dear and charming young men; Augustus is very amiable too, and when known, shows much good sense ”

“ Without brilliancy of talent, and utterly corrupt both as man and statesman, he was in many ways a patriot and a far-sighted supporter of the best interests of his country. He was first made prime minister in 1715, and in 1717 brought forward a scheme for the reduction of the public debt, which may be regarded as the earliest germ of a national sinking fund. After the accession of George II he became the foremost political figure of his time, and kept his position against all attacks by great political dexterity and the favor of Queen Caroline. ”

“ How could the people but love a sovereign Duke who, when a child was born to him, asked citizens of good repute rather than of high rank to come and be gossips?
In the revolutionary war, Duke George fought like a hero. At home, he afforded refuge to bold but honest writers, driven from more mighty states. He beautified his city, improved the country; and, without being of great mental cultivation himself, he loved to collect around him, scholars, philosophers, artists, authors, gentlemen. ”

“ He there found himself in the midst of his own creation, and was never so well pleased, as when he was engaged in raising noble piles of architecture; in conversing with men of genius, and planning future establishments in favour of the arts and sciences. Had the other Princes of Europe been possessed of such a philosophic disposition, George would never have attacked his neighbours; he was far more pleased to be at the head of an academy at Stanley, than of a victorious army, conquering a great kingdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had always to be reckoned with. He kept the appointments in his own hands, and his care to exclude the great Whig Lords from his Government, in favour of younger men with less influence, showed that he was determined not to be dictated to. But his policy of forming his first Administration entirely of Whigs made him of necessity the King, not of the whole nation, but of a faction. George the First was not a great statesman, and his little knowledge of English affairs made it difficult for him to include in his first Government some of the more moderate among the Tories. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In fact, George ought rather to be considered as a philosophical king, than a consummate politician: he had too many virtues to shine greatly in the latter character: yet those men, who have blamed so much the political conduct of the king, in giving liberty to a great kingdom, speak merely as politicians: but George's memory will out-last every reflexion of this nature, and virtue will triumph in spite of the most scandalous misrepresentation: In some instances, his conduct was certainly faulty, but he never committed an error, which did not proceed from a good motive. ”

“ Side by side with the gradual developement of the English Empire and of the English race has gone on, through the century that has passed since the close of the Seven Years' War, the transfer of power within England itself from a governing class to the nation as a whole. If the effort of George failed to restore the power of the Crown, it broke the power which impeded the advance of the people itself to political supremacy. ”

“ George the Second, contradicting the silly presages drawn from parallels, which had furnished opposition with names of unfortunate Princes, who were the second of their name, as Edward, Richard, Charles, and James, terminated his career with glory both to himself and his people. He died, crowned with years and honours, and respected from success; which with the multitude is the same as being beloved. He left a successor in the vigour of youth, ready to take the reins, and a ministry universally applauded, united, and unembarrassed by opponents. ”

“ George II. was a stern and stubborn man, possessed of considerable ability, but unpopular in its application; unimpassioned, but ambitious of fame; longing to figure in war, but compelled by the nation to peace; uneasy in England, and never happy but in Hanover, from which he imported his prejudices and his favourites, his politics and his household; fond of power, but capable of complying with the public will; and retaining all the feelings of a German Elector, yet respectful to the laws of a limited monarchy. ”

“ It is the hand of Britain that inflicts the wound! The arms of George, our rightful king, have been employed to shed that blood, when justice, or the honor of his crown, had called his subjects to the field! ”

“ The Monarch, who in England had been so great and magnificent a protector of the arts and sciences, acted worthy of himself in France. The French nation had enjoyed more establishments in favour of literature, such as academies, than Great-Britain, but they were in general only honourary: men of the greatest genius were often members of many academies, but almost starving for want: George therefore found no want of fresh establishments, but only the fixing certain salaries on the seats of those already in being. ”

“ It was certainly very wonderful, that all the kingdoms in Europe, should have their academies near four centuries before Great-Britain, but George supplyed the want of every thing that reflected an honour on his country. This noble institution, consisted of a president, but the number of members was not limited; the former had two thousand pounds a year, and the latter three hundred each; the first creation was of twenty-three members: and perhaps no period of time can display a brighter union of geniuses. ”

“ He has a frank, generous, unspoiled nature, is quick in apprehension, deliberate in thought, careful in expression, controlled by a far-reaching consciousness of duty and is animated by a vivid sense of his exalted mission. He is a keen sportsman, an admirable father and husband, and a lovable man."
King George has also been trained Imperially. He has trod the soil of his empire in every part of the globe and visited seas and lands which no other British sovereign ever saw ”

“ 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. ”