abinet, the
premier, and government by party, are still without legislative
sanction. The Act of Settlement was speedily unsettled. It separated
the administration from the legislature by excluding placemen from the
House of Commons; and it prohibited the king from visiting his foreign
dominions without leave. And it required the king to be advised by
the Privy Council, thereby rejecting a united cabinet, the exclusive
organ of a party. Both William and, at that time, Marlborough
preferred that all the leading men should be united in the
administration. Before the Act of Settlement, came into operation,
during the reign of Anne, the idea of a united cabinet taken from the
same party had prevailed, and at last even Harley could not be
tolerated by the Jacobites. If Bolingbroke had not made it impossible
for George I to trust the loyalty of the Tories, the rising of 1715
would have been fatal to them. The new dynasty governed by the Whigs,
that is, by one party, and by a cabinet, not by the council. As the
king understood neither English nor English affairs, he very rarely
presided. The cabinet decided in his absence, and then reported.

It is necessary to see what manner of man he was. A branch of the
ancient Guelphic House reigned at Hanover, and had succeeded by
politic and constant effort in consolidating half a dozen territories
into one important principality. It was the most rising and
prosperous of the German Houses. It acquired the ninth electorate in
1692; and it was manifestly appropriate when it was designated for
the English succession, because the first elector, who had
accomplished the greatness of his family, had married the youngest
daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, the Princess Palatine, who in an evil
hour was Queen of Bohemia. The Electress Sophia was a Calvinist. Her
husband was a Lutheran. His predecessor, who died in 1678, had been a
convert to Catholicism. Hanover had been the centre of reunion, and
there were Lutheran divines there who, under the commanding influence
of Leibnitz, went further than Tract No. 90 in the direction of Rome.
With their easy comprehension and impartial appreciation of religious
systems, the Guelphs of Hanover were not representative Protestants.
Some misgivings arose in the mind of William III, and it was thought
that he looked with suspicious favour on the young Frederic William,
the man who afterwards drilled the battalions which Frederic the Great
led to