English politics; and the part which George
succeeded in playing was undoubtedly a memorable one. During the first
ten years of his reign he managed to reduce government to a shadow, and
to turn the loyalty of his subjects at home into disaffection. Before
twenty years were over he had forced the American colonies into revolt
and independence, and brought England to what then seemed the brink of
ruin. Work such as this has sometimes been done by very great men, and
often by very wicked and profligate men; but George was neither
profligate nor great. He had a smaller mind than any English king before
him save James the Second. He was wretchedly educated, and his natural
powers were of the meanest sort. Nor had he the capacity for using
greater minds than his own by which some sovereigns have concealed their
natural littleness. On the contrary, his only feeling towards great men
was one of jealousy and hate. He longed for the time when "decrepitude
or death" might put an end to Pitt; and even when death had freed him
from "this trumpet of sedition," he denounced the proposal for a public
monument to the great statesman as "an offensive measure to me
personally." But dull and petty as his temper was, he was clear as to
his purpose and obstinate in the pursuit of it. And his purpose was to
rule. "George," his mother, the Princess of Wales, had continually
repeated to him in youth, "George, be king." He called himself always "a
Whig of the Revolution," and he had no wish to undo the work which he
believed the Revolution to have done. But he looked on the subjection of
his two predecessors to the will of their ministers as no real part of
the work of the Revolution, but as a usurpation of that authority which
the Revolution had left to the crown. And to this usurpation he was
determined not to submit. His resolve was to govern, not to govern
against law, but simply to govern, to be freed from the dictation of
parties and ministers, and to be in effect the first minister of the
State.

[Sidenote: Importance of his action.]

How utterly incompatible such a dream was with the Parliamentary
constitution of the country as it had received its final form from
Sunderland it is easy to see; and the effort of the young king to
realize it plunged England at once into a chaos of political and social
disorder which makes the first years of his reign the most painful and
humiliating period in our history. It is with an angry disgust that