f Pelham, of Wentworth,
were as little subservient to the sovereign as the great Frankish
nobles who stood about the throne of the Do-nothing kings. The Tory
party was politically almost non-existent. No Tory filled any office,
great or little, that was at the disposal of the Whigs, and the Whigs
had retained their ascendency for well-nigh half a century. Jacobitism
had been the ruin of the Tory cause. All Tories were not Jacobites,
but, roughly speaking, all Jacobites were Tories, and there were still,
even at the date of George's accession, stout-hearted, thick-headed
Tory gentlemen who believed in or vaguely hoped for a possible
restoration of a Stuart prince. It is curious to find that, though the
Whig ranks stood fast in defence of the House of Hanover, had made that
House, and owed their ascendency to their loyalty to that House, the
latest Hanoverian sovereign not only disliked them, but dealt them blow
after blow until he overthrew their rule. The Tories, who sighed for a
Stuart prince over the water, suddenly found to their astonishment that
they had a friend in the Hanoverian Guelph, whose name they hated,
whose right to the throne they challenged, and whose authority they
derided, when they dared not despise.

[Sidenote: 1761--The corrupt methods of the Whig party]

It cannot be denied that the Whigs had often abused, and more than
abused, the privileges which their long lease of power had given to
them. All political parties ruled by corruption during the last
century. The Whig was not more corrupt than the Tory, but it can
hardly be maintained that he was less corrupt. The great Whig Houses
bought their way to power with resolute unscrupulousness. A majority
in either House was simply a case of so much money down. The genius of
Walpole had secured his own pre-eminence at the cost of the almost
total degradation {25} of the whole administrative system of the
country. When George the Third came to the throne the Whigs were
firmly established in a powerful league of bigotry and in tolerance,
cemented by corruption, by bribery, by purchase of the most
uncompromising, of the basest kind. George the Third had fostered
through youthful years of silence those strong ideas of his own about
the importance of the kingly office which he was now to proclaim by his
deeds. In the way of those strong ideas, in the way of the steadfast
determination to be King in fact as well as in name, stood the great
Whig