f the exchequer, whose office, as
finance was then largely managed by the first lord of the treasury, was
of less importance than it soon became) and the "solicitor" (Charles
Yorke, solicitor-general) should also be summoned.[5] Soon afterwards
Bute was appointed groom of the stole to the king and entered the
cabinet.[6] After 1760 the cabinet began to assume its later form;
questions of the highest importance were debated and decided on in
meetings of eleven or twelve councillors, and in 1761 Hardwicke
complained that the king's "most serious affairs" were discussed by as
many as would in earlier days have formed a whole cabinet.[7] From 1765
the existence of an inner circle becomes less distinct, though at all
times a prime minister naturally takes counsel privately with the most
prominent or most trusted members of his government. Non-efficient
members of a cabinet appear more rarely until, in 1783, they disappear
altogether. The old inner cabinet becomes expanded into a council
consisting generally of high political officers, and the members, ten or
twelve in number, discuss and settle the weightiest affairs of state.
With the critical negotiations with France in 1796 came a new
development; the prime minister, the younger Pitt, and Lord Grenville,
the foreign secretary, arranged that the British ambassador should write
private despatches for their information, and others of a less
confidential character which might be read by the cabinet at large.[8]
Here a new inner cabinet is foreshadowed. It differed from the old one:
that arose from the small number who were entrusted with an actual share
in the government; this, from the fact that the number of the king's
confidential servants was so large that it was advisable that certain
matters of special secrecy should only be made known to and discussed by
two or three. The subsequent increase of the council promoted the
development of an inner cabinet, and such a body is understood to have
existed for many years during which cabinets have been of a size
undreamt of by ministers of George III.

The solidarity of the cabinet is now secured by the peculiar functions
and powers of a prime minister.[9] It was not so at the accession of
George III. That there should be an avowed prime minister possessing the
chief weight in the council and the principal place in the confidence of
the king is a doctrine which was not established until the first
administration of the younger Pi