sinister force, defended the party system with a visible squint at the Rockingham connection. The king also continued to illustrate the superior purity of personal rule by the distribution of "golden pills" at elections, and of pensions for political service, which partly accounted for the debt of half a million on the civil service contracted in spite of the parsimony of the court.

The quarrels between the House of Commons and Wilkes on the subject of general warrants and afterwards on that of freedom of election might have afforded the king, if he had been equal to the part which he had undertaken to play, an opportunity of ingratiating himself with the people at the expense of the oligarchy by keeping aloof from the fray and rather posing as the guardian of popular right against the encroachments of a rotten borough Parliament. But his arbitrary temper and his love of formal order led him to back the domineering violence of the House of Commons, and thus to earn a conspicuous niche in Junius's Temple of Fame. In the case of the Lord George Gordon riots he distinguished himself by his resolution while his ministers trembled a legal shadows, and probaoly saved the city. It does not appear that the king was originally responsible for the colonial policy of George Grenville. Neither on Grenville's part was there any intention of extending arbitrary power such as might have suited the temper of his master. Grenville was a Whig and a strict constitutional lawyer. All he wanted was to make the colonists pay for their own defence and to press military union upon them at the same time. Here again, had the king's mind been large enough for the part which he had undertaken, he might have come forward as a mediator, the impartial father of his people on both sides of the Atlantic, and cast over the colonists the spell of royal influence which with the vast majority of them still had power. But his mind was not large enough for the part which he had undertaken. His arbi

trary temper was aroused by colonial resistance, and when he was once in the fray the obstinacy noted by Lord Waldegrave was enlisted on the same side. It most unluckily happened that at this crisis, in consequence of an administrative deadlock produced by the jealousies and selfishness of the aristocratic factions, the king was enabled to make his courtly and pliant nominee, Lord North, prime minister with a sure majority, and thus to realize for a time his ideal of personal government. There can be no doubt that by him personally the fatal war was prolonged, when his minister had lost hope and would have given in. If the nation had not been overwhelmingly against him, he would have continued the struggle after Yorktown. He controlled his anguish so far as to receive the first ambassador of the rebel republic with a dignity and a good feeling to which American historians have not been ready enough to do justice. But the iron entered into his heart. Five years afterwards he wrote to Pitt of "the feelings that never have day or night been at ease since this country took that disgraceful step that has made me wish what years I have still to reign not to be drawn into a war." He was sickened of war for a time altogether, and desired the nation "to remain quiet for some years, and not by wanting to take a showy part in the transactions of Europe again become the dupe of other powers and for ideal greatness draw herself into lasting distress." "England must cut her coat," he said, "according to her cloth." Cobden, when he was shown the passage, joyfully entered it in his pocketbook.

It is probable that the leaders of the aristocratic connections scented another course of personal government with Shelburne for prime minister, though Shelburne would not have been a Bute or a North; and that to prevent this and keep power in the hands of the connections, the ill-starred Coalition was formed. So at all events the king seems to have thought, and his alarm was excited to the highest pitch

by Fox's India Bill, which would have given the party leaders control of the vast patronage of India. The result was the conspiracy of the king with Thurlow and Temple against his ministers. For that conspiracy and those who engaged in it no words of censure can be too strong. Defence there is none. If the king had a right to send such a message, behind the back of his ministers, to the Lords, and Temple had a right to deliver it, why did not Temple deliver it openly from his place, instead of sneaking about with a card? The very phrase that the king would consider those who voted for a public measure as his enemies, thus putting his personal favor above duty to the State, was enough to damn the whole proceeding. By accepting the premiership as the gift of this intrigue, Pitt was guilty of an act of disloyalty to the constitution which youthful ambition and the infamy of the Coalition could not wholly excuse, and for which perhaps he paid when there came to be a conflict between his policy and the personal prejudice of the king. What course the Coalition should have taken, it is not easy to say. But whatever Course it had taken, so long as the king was resolute, its unpopularity would have insured its defeat. Its infamy covered that of the conspiracy. Every course must have ended in an appeal to the nation, and the result of an appeal to the nation was beyond doubt. Pitt has received fully as much credit as he deserves for ability shown in the conduct of a battle in which the real force, though in reserve, was over whelmingly on his side.

George and personal influence had won after all. But, strange to say, the completeness of their victory turned it almost into practical defeat. The union of all interests, landed, commercial, or Indian, and of parties Tory and Radical, in Pitt's favor, giving him an immense majority in Parliament, made him independent of the crown, and from this time to the outbreak of the French revolution William was the patriot king. This

George could not fail to see, and he seems never to have taken Pitt to his heart, as he had once taken North, or as he afterwards took Addington. The relations between him and Pitt appear to have been always formal and somewhat constrained. His "golden pills" and his royal boroughs had ceased to count. Pitt's power I was above the need of such supports, and corruption, of the coarser kind at least, was henceforth at an end. It is due, however, to the king to say that he remained loyal, as far as we know, to the minister of his choice. He loved Thurlow, servile and intriguing beneath his mask of rude insolence, better than Pitt; yet when Pitt called for Thurlow's head the king gave it him with a good grace.

The next thing that brings the king into prominence in fact is his insanity. He had betrayed the tendency early in his reign, and, if hereditary monarchy. took any account or the laws of nature, would then have been advised to leave the throne. What the nature of the insanity was historians do not clearly tell us. The restlessness to which they ascribe it must surely have been rather the symptom of its approach than its cause. Nor can we suppose that excessive abstemiousness, to which they also point, would lead to madness. The tendency appears to have been congenital, by whatever irritants it may have been called into play. The king can never have been radically sane. Unfortunately his influence, instead of being diminished, was rather enhanced by public sympathy, and not the least of the reasons for persistence in withholding citizenship from the whole Catholic population was the belief that justice could not be done without bringing on another fit of his madness.

In the struggle about the Regency at the time of the king's illness it incidentally appeared that the constitution was still unsettled, and that the Cabinet system, though pretty well installed, had yet to wait for full recognition. The conduct of both parties, as well as that of Pitt and the Tories,

not seem to have been an intense bigot. He spoke kindly of the Methodists; he protested against the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed by refusing to stand up when it was recited. He was crusading against revolutionary atheism with the Catholic monarchies and the Catholic Church for his allies. He appears to have been moved not so much by intolerance as by a perverse fancy about the obligation of his coronation oath, and by a fear that if he broke it the crown would pass from him and his dynasty to the house of Savoy. Under what construction of the Act of Settlement the crown could, by a concession to Roman Catholicism on the part of the Protestant house of Brunswick, be transferred to the Roman Catholic house of Savoy, it would have been difficult to explain. But the king's mental condition was still probably unsound, and it was easy for the three archbishops and the scoundrel Loughborough to play on his morbid fancy for their own ends. So in the agony of the nation's peril threefourths of the population of Ireland were shut out of citizenship and patriotism to satisfy a scruple of which no one now speaks without contempt. It was thus that the pupil of Bolingbroke, or of Bolingbroke's disciples, fulfilled the idea of a patriot king. No fault can justly be found with Pitt. In the present day the sovereign's hand might be forced. He would be left without a government and would find it necessary to succumb. But it was not so in those days. George III. had a real though unconstitutional veto; Pitt could not have deposed him, though he might perhaps have driven him mad. By resigning, Pitt did what honor required. He did right by returning to power when the nation in the extremity of peril called for him, though he was unable to carry Catholic emancipation. For the suggestion that he had foreseen the, king's veto and obtained Roman Catholic support for the Union by holding out a promise which he knew could not

foundation. We are hardly prepared to immolate to a single reputation the characters of all the dead and the political history of the country. It is pleasant to know that Loughborough missed his prize. He clung to the Cabinet and persisted in attending councils till Addington showed him the door. Then he planted himself near Windsor and tried to install himself as confidential friend of the king. But George, though incapable of understanding greatness, had an insight into character in its lower grades. It is due to him to say that, happy as he was in the courtly mediocrity of Addington, and unwilling as he undoubtedly must have been to exchange it for the austere ascendency of Pitt, he took Pitt back with a perfectly good grace and was loyal to him when reinstalled.

Again, the king exercised his personal power in the proscription of Fox, whom Pitt proposed, by way of uniting the nation in the hour of peril, to take into his second ministry. Fox's political career may be said to have afforded plausible grounds at least for unwillingness to entrust him with power. His chief sin in the king's eyes, no doubt, was leading astray the heir to the crown, though in this respect, so far as the moral character of the prince was concerned, Fox had been less guilty than Sheridan. When Pitt was gone and had left a surprising dearth of first-rate statesmanship behind him, the king overcame his prejudice and admitted Fox to the government. It has been hence inferred that if Pitt had been resolute the king would have been brought to consent to Catholic emancipation. The objection to Fox was personal, and the king, driven by necessity, yielded in this case, as he had yielded in the case of Chatham, without giving up his dislike of the man. The objection to Catholic emancipation was conscientious, however perverted the conscience might be. "I can give up my crown," said the king, "and retire from power; I can quit my palace and live

in a cottage; I can lay my head on a block and lose my life; but I can not break my oath." About the last exercise of the personal power, in fact, was the ejection of the Grenville ministry, virtually for proposing to allow men who believed in transubstantiation to serve the country in its utmost peril in military command. We shall never exhaust that well-spring of bitter memories, the history of Catholic emancipation.

To what the world will advance or revert from this system of government by party, the caucus, the platform, and those moral civil wars which we call general elections, nobody yet foresees; but it may safely be said that personal government-by a sovereign without responsibility-has been tried at sufficient cost and has most decisively failed.

GOLDWIN SMITH.

From Macmillan's Magazine. CHRISTMAS AT BYLAND.

It was pitiableto see how the monks of Byland yawned that night as they sat in their fine old refectory. They had a dainty supper before them, every dish was a marvel in its way, for their cook was one whom kings swore by, and men would travel many a long mile for a single glass of their wine. Yet the brothers glanced askance at the food, passing much of it by untasted; and though they drank draught after draught they did so surlily. "Brother Ninian is losing his cunning," they whispered; "his capons are not what they used to be."

"There's no fault with the capons," growled the abbot; "it's the sauce we lack. Long faces spoil good eating. Ah, things were different when Wymund was alive! He could make the devil himself laugh, and there's naught like mirth for giving a smack to one's victuals. I would yield up every bauble we have, and gladly too," he went on, pointing to a fine array of silver cups VOL. XII. 627

LIVING AGE.

and tankards, "to hear him tell once more how he carried off the Dumfriesmen's wives, by the special order of the pope, as he said."

The abbot's neighbors would have smiled if they had heard him; for his baubles were popularly supposed to be dearer to him than his soul; and the oddest stories were told of the way some of them had come into his possession. The monks of Rievaulx used to say, when any specially ruthless deed was done in the district: "There goes more plate to Byland; that man would shrive Beelzebub for a tankard." But then the jealous always see with jaundiced eyes; and all the world knew that rich barons were more prone to make their peace with heaven at Byland than at Rievaulx.

"You should have joined us in Wymund's day, Brother Francis," the abbot remarked. "What! you never heard of Bishop Wymund? Have you Guienne folk no ears? Why, he made more raids and killed more Scots than any man in Christendom. A rival bishop, one of the mongrel sort, put out his eyes, or he would never have come to Byland. Ah," and here he heaved a mighty sigh, "time passed quickly when he was with us; at this rate we shall yawn our heads off before Christmas."

Abbot Wilfrid was sore at heart, and he showed it. Nature had been more lavish with virtues than with brains to his community, and he wished it had been otherwise. "It's living with sheep that turns men into wolves," he was wont to say. "There's never a stranger will come within hailing distance this many a moon," he continued, looking around him grimly. "Hark how the wind howls! Brother Francis," he called out sharply, after a pause, "you are counted in Guienne, I hear, à nimble-witted fellow. Zounds, man, can't you think of some device to while away the time till fishing comes round again?"

Brother Francis pondered for a moment, then a keen, bright look shot into his eyes, and he began a long tale of what the monks of Clairvaux, or perhaps it was they of Provins, or of Cluny,