sition of their existences, there were both in town and country
plenty of decent, sober, honorable, and upright men and women who had
nothing in common with the fine gentlemen and the fine ladies who fill
the historical fashion plates. If, unfortunately, Squire Western and
Parson Truliber were true pictures, at least Parson Adam and Sir Roger
de Coverley still held good. None the less a young, self-willed King,
not too intelligent and not too well educated, could scarcely have come
to his sovereignty at a time less like to be fruitful of good for him
or for the country that he was resolved to govern.

{22}

CHAPTER XLIII.

GEORGE AND THE DRAGONS.

[Sidenote: 1760--George the Third as a "Briton"]

The King was not lucky in his first act of sovereignty. In his speech
at the opening of Parliament on November 18, 1760, he used a form of
words which he, and some of those who advised him, evidently believed
to be eminently calculated to advance his popularity. "Born and
educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton," the King
said; and the words would seem to suggest such an intimacy of
association between the King and the kingdom as must needs knit the
hearts of ruler and of ruled more closely together. Yet the choice of
words gave offence in certain quarters, and for two quite distinct
reasons. Many of the adherents and admirers of the late King--for even
George the Second had his admirers--were indignant at the contrast
which the new King seemed deliberately to draw between himself and his
grandfather. In accentuating the fact that he was born and bred in
England, George the Third appeared by imputation to be casting a slur
upon the German nature and German prejudices of George the Second.
This boast, however much it might offend the feelings of the friends of
the late King, was not at all calculated to affect the mass of the
public, who had little love for George the Second, and whose affection
for the new King was based mainly on the hope and the assumption that
he would prove to be as unlike the old King as possible. But there was
another interpretation to be put upon the royal words which was likely
to cause a wider impression and a wider hostility. It would seem that
some of the King's advisers wished him to write that he gloried in the
name of Englishman; it would even seem that the King had actually used
this word in the written draft of his speech. {23} Lord Bute, it was
said, had st