d the irksome position of
constitutional kings. But neither had any qualities which could make
their honesty attractive to the people at large. The temper of George
the First was that of a gentleman usher; and his one care was to get
money for his favourites and himself. The temper of George the Second
was that of a drill-sergeant, who believed himself master of his realm
while he repeated the lessons he had learned from his wife, and which
his wife had learned from the Minister. Their Court is familiar enough
in the witty memoirs of the time; but as political figures the two
Georges are almost absent from our history. William of Orange, while
ruling in most home matters by the advice of his Ministers, had not only
used the power of rejecting bills passed by the two Houses, but had kept
in his own hands the control of foreign affairs. Anne had never yielded
even to Marlborough her exclusive right of dealing with Church
preferment, and had presided to the last at the Cabinet Councils of her
ministers. But with the accession of the Georges these reserves passed
away. No sovereign since Anne's death has appeared at a Cabinet Council,
or has ventured to refuse his assent to an Act of Parliament. As
Elector of Hanover indeed the king still dealt with Continental affairs:
but his personal interference roused an increasing jealousy, while it
affected in a very slight degree the foreign policy of his English
counsellors.

England, in short, was governed not by the king but by the Whig
Ministers. But their power was doubled by the steady support of the very
kings they displaced. The first two sovereigns of the House of Hanover
believed they owed their throne to the Whigs, and looked on the support
of the Whigs as the true basis of their monarchy. The new monarchs had
no longer to dread the spectre of republicanism which had haunted the
Stuarts and even Anne, whenever a Whig domination threatened her; for
republicanism was dead. Nor was there the older anxiety as to the
prerogative to sever the monarchy from the Whigs, for the bounds of the
prerogative were now defined by law, and the Whigs were as zealous as
any Tory could be in preserving what remained. From the accession of
George the First therefore to the death of George the Second the whole
influence of the Crown was thrown into the Whig scale; and if its direct
power was gone, its indirect influence was still powerful. It was indeed
the more powerful that the Revolution ha