under William and Mary. The Mutiny Act, by which the army is kept up,
was only passed for one year at a time. The grant of taxes was also
only made annually. Parliament must therefore be called every year in
order to obtain money to carry on the work of government, and in order
to keep up the military organization.

As a result of the Revolution of 1688, as the deposition of James II.
and the appointment of William and Mary are called, and of the changes
which succeeded it, Parliament gradually became the most powerful part
of government, and the House of Commons the strongest part of
Parliament. The king's ministers came more and more to carry out the
will of Parliament rather than that of the king. Somewhat later the
custom grew up by which one of the ministers by presiding over the
whole Cabinet, nominating its members to the king, representing it in
interviews with the king, and in other ways giving unity to its
action, created the position of prime minister. Thus the modern
Parliamentary organization of the government was practically complete
before the middle of the eighteenth century. William and Mary died
childless, and Anne, Mary's sister, succeeded, and reigned till 1714.
She also left no heir. In the meantime arrangements had been made to
set aside the descendants of James II, who were Roman Catholics, and
to give the succession to a distant line of Protestant descendants of
James I. In this way George I, Elector of Hanover, of the house of
Brunswick, became king, reigned till 1727, and was succeeded by George
II, who reigned till 1760. The sovereigns of England have been of this
family ever since.

The years following the Revolution of 1688 were a time of almost
constant warfare on the Continent, in the colonies, and at sea. In
many of these wars the real interests of England were but slightly
concerned. In others her colonial and native dependencies were so
deeply affected as to make them veritable national wars. Just at the
close of the period, in 1763, the war known in Europe as the Seven
Years' War and in America as the French and Indian War was brought to
an end by the peace of Paris. This peace drew the outlines of the
widespread empire of Great Britain, for it handed over to her Canada,
the last of the French possessions in America, and guaranteed her the
ultimate predominance in India.

*50. The Extension of Agriculture.*--During the seventeenth and the
first half of the eighteenth century the