the instruction which all but the lower classes of his subjects give to their children as a matter of course?

Being not deficient in natural quickness, and the more regularly industrious because of his habitually temperate life, he made himself thoroughly master of all the ordinary details of business; insomuch that the same high authority has ascribed to him a more thorough knowledge of the duties of each several department in the state than any other man ever possessed; and this is the testimony of one both singularly accurate in stating facts, and eminently qualified to form such a comparative estimate by his own intimate acquaintance with official details. We must, however, take care not to overrate the difficulty or the value of this acquirement. Kings have a peculiar interest in ascertaining the bounds of each department's duties and rights. They find protection in keeping each within its own limits. Coming, of necessity, into frequent contact with them all, monarchs can easily master the knowledge of their several prerogatives and functions; so that this becomes like heraldry and etiquette, wherein they are all great proficients, emphatically a Royal branch of knowledge. No proofs remain, nor has even any assertion been made, that he had any familiarity with the nobler branches of information connected with state affairs; the constitution and privileges of parliament; the jurisdiction of Courts; the principles, nay, even the details of banking, or of trade generally; the East India or Colonial affairs of his Empire; the interests of foreign countries; the statistics of his own; all of them kinds of knowledge as certainly worthy of princes as they are generally despised by them. That he was a diligent man of business, punc

tual to his appointments, regular in the distribution of his time, never wanting when his mechanical interposition was required, always ready to continue at work until the affair in hand was despatched, nor ever suffering pleasure or distraction of any kind to interfere with the transaction of the matters belonging to his high station, is as undeniable as that all this might be predicated of one who had the most limited capacity, or the most confined information, and who had little else to recommend him than the strict sense of his official duties, and the resolution to make everything yield to the discharge of them, those duties being much more of the hand than the head.

But it would be a great mistake to imagine that George III.'s ambition was confined within the range of his abilities. He was impressed with a lofty feeling of his prerogative, and a firm determination to maintain, perhaps extend it. At all events, he was resolved not to be a mere name, or a cipher in public affairs; and, whether from a sense of the obligations imposed upon him by his station, or from a desire to enjoy all its powers and privileges, he certainly, while his reason remained entire, but especially during the earlier period of his reign, interfered in the affairs of government more than any prince who ever sat upon the throne of this country since our monarchy was distinctly admitted to be a limited one, and its executive functions were distributed among responsible ministers. The correspondence which he carried on with his confidential servants during the ten most critical years of his life lies before us, and it proves that his attention was ever awake to all the occurrences of the government. Not a step was

taken in foreign, colonial, or domestic affairs, that he did not form his opinion upon it, and exercise his influence over it. The instructions to ambassadors, the orders to governors, the movements of forces down to the marching of a single battalion in the districts of this country, the appointments to all offices in church and state, not only the giving away of judgeships, bishoprics, regiments, but the subordinate promotions, lay and clerical; all these form the topics of his letters; on all his opinion is pronounced decisively; on all his will is declared peremptorily. In one letter he decides the appointment of a Scotch puisne judge; in another the march of a troop from Buckinghamshire into Yorkshire; in a third the nomination to the Deanery of Worcester; in a fourth he says that, " if Adam, the architect, succeeds Worsley at the Board of Works, he shall think Chambers ill used."*

For the greater affairs of state it is well known how substantially he insisted upon being the King de facto as well as de jure. The American war, the long exclusion of the liberal party, the French Revolution, the Catholic question, are all sad monuments of his real power. Of all his resolutions on these affairs, the desire to retain America in subjection seems to have been his strongest propensity; during the whole contest all his opinions, all his feelings, and all his designs, turned upon what he termed the “ preservation of the empire." Nor was his rooted prejudice against both the Whigs and the French unconnected with

* This was in 1777, in the middle of the most anxious moment of the American contest; the letter immediately preceding relates to the sum of affairs.

the part they both took in behalf of the Colonies. Rather than quit his hold over those provinces and receive the Whigs into his confidence, or do what he called "submitting to be trampled on by his enemies," he at one time threatened to abdicate, and they who knew him are well aware that he did not threaten without a fixed resolution to act. No less than thrice within four days, in March 1778, did he use this language, in the agony of his mind, at having a junction with the Whig party proposed by his chief minister; and upon one occasion he says, "If the people will not stand by me, they shall have another king, for I never will set my hand to what will make me miserable to the last hour of my life." The threat is revived upon the division against Lord North four years afterwards.

That such a sovereign was, for the servants he confided in, the best possible master, may well be supposed. He gave them his entire and hearty support. If he kept a watchful eye over all the proceedings both of parliament and the country; if we find him one day commenting on the line taken in debate as "dangerous," at another as "timid and vascillating," or discussing the composition of the majority or its numbers upon the division, or suggesting that the journey of Mr. Fox to Paris should make the different departments bring on all their business before he comes back, as we shall have much less noise for the next three weeks;" or expressing his conviction that "the Speaker's illness is feigned, and all to let the opposition have their pleasure at Newmarket;" he also asks, "Who deserted you last night that you thought you had a right to count upon? Give me their names, that I may mark my sense of their beha

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viour at the drawing-room to-morrow;" and again, “if the utmost obsequiousness on my part, at the levee today, can gain over Mr. Solicitor-General to your views, it shall not be wanting." This was, indeed, efficiently supporting a favourite ministry; and when he had one forced upon him, his whole conduct was the reverse ; all his countenance being given to their antagonists, until the moment arrived when he could safely throw them out.

The first impression which such conduct makes is unfavourable to the monarch, and may at first sight even give rise to an opinion that it was unconstitutional. But further reflection makes this somewhat more than doubtful. The question is, "Does the king of this country hold a real or only a nominal office? Is he merely a form, or is he a substantive power in our mixed and balanced constitution?" Some maintain, nay, it is a prevailing opinion among certain authorities of no mean rank, that the sovereign, having chosen his ministers, assigns over to them the whole executive power. They treat him as a kind of trustee for a temporary use, to preserve, as it were, some contingent estate; or a provisional assignee, to hold the property of an insolvent for a day, and then divest himself of the estate by assigning it over. They regard the only power really vested in the crown to be the choice of ministers, and even the exercise of this to be controlled by the parliament. They reduce the king more completely to the condition of a state pageant or state cipher than one of Abbé Sieyes's constitutions did, when he proposed to have a Grand Functionary with no power except to give away offices; upon which Napoleon, then first consul, to whom the proposition was tendered,