earning was suddenly changed. The University of Oxford had
long been the chief seat of disaffection. In troubled times, the High
Street had been lined with bayonets; the colleges had been searched by
the King's messengers. Grave doctors were in the habit of talking very
Ciceronian treason in the theatre; and the undergraduates drank bumpers
to Jacobite toasts, and chanted Jacobite airs. Of four successive
Chancellors of the University, one had notoriously been in the
Pretender's service; the other three were fully believed to be in secret
correspondence with the exiled family. Cambridge had therefore been
especially favored by the Hanoverian Princes, and had shown herself
grateful for their patronage. George the First had enriched her library;
George the Second had contributed munificently to her Senate House.
Bishoprics and deaneries were showered on her children. Her Chancellor
was Newcastle, the chief of the Whig aristocracy; her High Steward was
Hardwicke, the Whig head of the law. Both her burgesses had held office
under the Whig ministry. Times had now changed. The University of
Cambridge was received at St. James's with comparative coldness. The
answers to the addresses of Oxford were all graciousness and warmth.

The watchwords of the new government were prerogative and purity. The
sovereign was no longer to be a puppet in the hands of any subject, or
of any combination of subjects. George the Third would not be forced to
take ministers whom he disliked, as his grandfather had been forced to
take Pitt. George the Third would not be forced to part with any whom he
delighted to honor, as his grandfather had been forced to part with
Carteret. At the same time, the system of bribery which had grown up
during the late reigns was to cease. It was ostentatiously proclaimed
that, since the accession of the young King, neither constituents nor
representatives had been bought with the secret service money. To free
Britain from corruption and oligarchical cabals, to detach her from
Continental connections, to bring the bloody and expensive war with
France and Spain to a close, such were the specious objects which Bute
professed to procure.

Some of these objects he attained. England withdrew, at the cost of a
deep stain on her faith, from her German connections. The war with
France and Spain was terminated by a peace, honorable indeed and
advantageous to our country, yet less honorable and less advantageous
than might hav