n brought home of late with painful force to all
thoughtful Englishmen.

Nor has he escaped that influence in his criticism of George III. It
would be easy to show that the modern theory of Parliamentary
Government, the theory accepted by his immediate predecessors and now
firmly established, was one on which no scrupulous and conscientious
Prince in the position of George III. could possibly have acted. The
King found throughout the earlier years of his reign, until the younger
Pitt obtained an actual potent and controlling influence in the Houses
and in the closet, that the influence which secured a Parliamentary
majority was not his ministers' but his own. The dismissal of the elder
Pitt and Newcastle broke at once the strongest coalition of aristocratic
and popular influence, the mightiest league between intellect sustained
by national confidence, borough-mongering wealth, and family interest,
that ever dominated the unreformed Parliament. It was in the King's
power to give the control of the House to whom he would--to Chatham,
Grafton, Rockingham, or North. The one thoroughly unconstitutional use
of the Royal influence, with which the King can fairly be charged, was
employed to defeat the most unconstitutional and indefensible measure
ever brought forward by a corrupt and unprincipled coalition--the India
Bill, which endeavoured to secure for Fox and North personally the power
and patronage of our Oriental Empire. The King could not shift the
responsibility of administration upon ministers who owed office and
Parliamentary support to himself. The American war was not his work. The
Stamp Act was brought in during his first illness by the minister he
most hated. The Tea Duty was the madness of Townshend; and the step,
which gave the signal for revolt, was really a remission of two-thirds
of that duty. True that the King was the last man to agree to the
disruption of the empire, the abandonment of thousands of American loyal
subjects, to lower the flag of England before her coalesced European
enemies; but in that perseverance, surely not unkingly, he had one
enthusiastic supporter; and those who censure the King pass the same
censure on the dying speech of Lord Chatham. The one fatal error of a
long and conscientious reign should be laid to the account less of
George III. than of those who betrayed Pitt's counsels and played upon
the conscientious vagaries of a half-crazed brain.

Mr. Bagehot dwells exclusively upon