state
of the country, it does not seem that there was any solid ground. What
would have happened if the bloated King had been tossed ashore a corpse
on the coast of England or the coast of Holland? So far as the public
affairs of England are concerned, nothing in particular would have
happened, we think. George would have been buried in right royal
fashion; there would have been an immense concourse of sight-seers to
stare at the royal obsequies; and Frederick would have been proclaimed,
and the people would have taken little notice of the fact. What could
it have mattered to the English people whether George the Second or his
eldest son was {73} on the throne? No doubt Frederick was generally
distrusted and disliked wherever he was known; but, then, George the
Second was ever so much more widely known, and therefore was ever so
much more distrusted and disliked. The chances of a successful
Jacobite rising would not have been affected in any way by the fact
that it was this Hanoverian prince and not that who was sitting on the
throne of England. It would be hardly possible to find a more utterly
unkingly and ignoble sovereign than George the Second; it is hardly
possible that his son could have turned out any worse; and there was,
at all events, the possibility that he might turn out better. Outside
London and Richmond very few people cared in the least which of the
Hanoverians wore the crown. Those who were loyal to the reigning
family were honestly loyal on the principle that it was better for the
country to have a Hanoverian sovereign than a Stuart. Many of those
who in their feelings were still devoted to the Stuart tradition did
not think it would be worth while plunging the country into a civil war
for the almost hopeless chance of a revolution. England was beginning
to see that, with all the corruption of Parliament and the
constituencies under Walpole's administration, there was yet a very
much better presentation of constitutional government than they had
ever seen before. The arbitrary power of the sovereign had practically
ceased to affect anybody outside the circles of the Ministry and the
Court. The law tribunals sat and judged men impartially according to
their lights, and person and property were at least secure against the
arbitrary intrusion of the sovereign power. The old-fashioned
chivalric, picturesque loyalty was gone; not merely because royalty
itself had ceased to be chivalric and pic