pose it is to be ridiculous. He is in favour of triennial, but objects to annual, Parliaments. He opposes Parliamentary reform in its later sense, because he holds that, if Parliament could disfranchise a borough, it could disfranchise a whole kingdom, or elect itself for life. Though approving Chatham's plan for increasing the number of county members, he would not enfranchise the large towns. He would prefer to see merchants and manufacturers becoming freeholders by their industry, to making more boroughs as seats of rest and cabal.2 Obviously the demagogue is still tied and bound by chains of red tape.

73. One tendency, indeed, which resulted from the peculiar conditions of the struggle has a democratic aspect. The House of Commons was at this time the object of popular distrust instead of the organ of the popular will, and Junius. tries to assign limits to the supremacy of the legislature, and asserts in strong language the subordination of the House to the people. The liberty of the press is, of course, the 'palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman,' and the right of juries to return a general verdict, in all cases whatsoever, is an essential part of our constitution, not to be controlled or limited by the judges, nor in any shape questionable to the legislature.'4 In short, the old constitutional precedents are sacred, and the best means of preserving them is to allow Junius an unlimited right of abusing the king and his ministers, without danger of prosecution to his printers. Granting this, no constitutional change was desirable. Junius's pet statesman was George Grenville, whose masterly portrait by Burke has made him the model and antitype of all constitutional pedants. The new impulse as yet showed no signs of a tendency to desert the old channels. The most powerful representative of popular discontent was an embodiment of personal spite, to whom the mouldy parchments of constitutional privileges were as sacred as the laws of nature. Junius, in virtue of the narrowness of his views, has become antiquated more rapidly than almost any writer of at all equal power; and already has less interest for modern readers than Locke or Hume.

1 Junius, i. *289.

2 Ib. i. *291.

E.g. 'Dedication to English People, and Letter to the King,' i. 62. 4 Junius, i. 4.

74. Thoughts, however, were slowly fermenting even amidst the dogged conservatism of the English mind, which were destined to produce work of far more permanent value, or to affect more deeply the history of the country. As I am only indirectly concerned with the history of events, I shall quit the order of time in order to give something like a logical scheme of the various phases of opinion. The relation between opinion and practice, the way in which political philosophising governed the expression of political passions, is not easy to trace in detail, though the general relations are sufficiently obvious. Politicians, in truth, cared little enough for logic, and in the shifting phantasmagoria of English politics down to the revolutionary period, it would be rash to assign too confidently any definite theory to the various. sections engaged in this partisan warfare. Yet, roughly speaking, we may discriminate four, or perhaps five, separate movements in the political world, to each of which corresponds, roughly and incoherently enough, a certain theoretical impulse. Four factions wrangled and struggled, and went through almost every possible combination and permutation during the early years of George III.

75. The king himself was at the head of a party personally contemptible. Stranger irony of fate can hardly be imagined than that which placed this stupidest of rulers at the head of a great people during one of its most trying crises; as if to show how much mischief can be worked by wrong-headed honesty, and how little the stupidity or the mischief wrought by a ruler can affect loyalty. Poor George III. became highly popular in later years, partly because he was blind and mad; titles to the affection of his people which he had enjoyed in a figurative sense long before they came to him in good earnest. But his popularity was also due in part to the fact that he represented fairly enough those qualities of dogged courage and honesty, shading by imperceptible degrees into sheer pigheadedness and insensibility to new ideas, upon which we are accustomed, rightly or wrongly, to pride ourselves. It was natural enough that such a man should fail to recognise the fact that his aristocracy regarded him as, in right, a mere figurehead and bit of State ceremonial. And, therefore, with a courage which was re

spectable, though with lamentable incapacity to understand the signs of the times, or to distinguish between narrowminded scruples and high-handed principle, he tried to play his part, and defended the decaying fortunes of kingly sanctity.

76. Alternately opposed to him and truckling to his wishes was the purely aristocratic party, upon which had descended the mantle of the revolutionary prophets of 1688. No more selfish and unprincipled clique ever clung to power in a great country. Its leaders had, indeed, a dumb sense of patriotism, regarding the honour of England as more or less involved in the maintenance of their own privileges. But factions, it is said, are like serpents, whose heads are propelled by their tails. And if the Duke of Bedford was the official representative of a great aristocratic connection, its animating spirit was best represented by such a man as Rigby, the embodiment of petty personal intrigue, drawn by a certain blind instinct to the side of oppression, but yet too profoundly cynical to be actively tyrannical.

77. Opposed to these two parties, though at times cooperating, were two sections of the Whigs, who had each a genuine political belief. Each of them possessed one leader of surpassing eminence, though the system seemed to be ingeniously contrived to neutralise the influence of great abilities. The Rockingham party seems to have comprised many men of amiable character, of personal purity, and of high intentions. But they were too weak, or too little skilful in the arts of intrigue, to impress a governing impulse upon the country. It never seems to have occurred to them more than to other aristocratic factions, that the claims of genius were for a moment to be compared to the claims of family. The English nation, which had a Burke and a Chatham amongst its statesmen, had, therefore, to be governed by a North, in humble submission to the gross stupidity of a George III. The most intelligent party thought that it had done ample homage to the man whose genius is their one great title to the respect of posterity, when it gave the chief office in the State to his pupil, Fox, and flung to him the crumbs of subordinate office. Burke, however, accepted his position without There are, he says, 'two only securities for the

a murmur.

importance of the people; power arising from popularity, and power arising from connection.' The last source of power was represented by the Whig families, and Burke took a humble place in the ranks of one of the aristocratic rings which then carried on the government.

78. 'Power arising from popularity' was, of course, represented by Chatham, the head of the last great party in the State. By the energy of his haughty will he stands out above all contemporary politicians. Scorning the wretched intrigues which passed for statesmanship amongst his rivals, he placed himself for a brief period at the head of the nation. For a moment England was ruled by its natural king, and had its reward in a blaze of military glory. During his later years, disease, the distrust of his rivals, or his own arrogance, kept Chatham for the most part in melancholy retirement. For another brief period he tried, but failed grievously, to weld together the jarring elements of party into a powerful administration. The popular will could only impose a Chatham upon the king and the aristocracy at a time of fierce excitement. In calmer periods, and when his powers were failing, the politicians were too strong for him. Chatham, as the representative of the popular favour, and by the natural turn of a vehement mind, intuitive rather discursive, and more eloquent than logical, was inclined towards the absolute dogmas of the revolutionary school. He was not, indeed, a believer in the rights of man in a revolutionary sense; for his ardent patriotism often took the form of almost melodramatic loyalty. But he judged the issues of the time by principles which easily assimilated with those of the revolutionists. Wilkes and the patriots of the City revered him as their natural head, though a head generally wrapped in clouds and darkness. Camden, his favourite lawyer, was the great judicial defender of popular rights. Shelburne, his lieutenant, was the patron of Priestley and Price; and it is not difficult to suppose that, under other circumstances, Chatham might have developed into a Mirabeau.

^

79. The logical division of sentiments which, as I have said, corresponds, though very roughly, to these party divisions may be briefly defined. George III., as the last representa

1 Burke's Works, ii. 239.

tive of some shadow of divine right, found his Abdiel in the last of the Tories, Johnson. The Bedfords and their like would probably have explained their constitutional theories, so far as they had any theories, in the language of the good 'balance of power' doctrinaires, Blackstone and Delolme. Burke was at once the ablest practical exponent, and incomparably the greatest theoretical exponent, of the doctrines of the more intelligent Whigs. The thinkers who sanctioned those more popular impulses of which Chatham was the great representative must be divided into two classes. Some of them belonged to the purely English or utilitarian school, of which Bentham became in later years the accepted prophet. Others were more influenced by the French theorists, and may be regarded as continuing more or less directly the impulse of Rousseau. I propose to consider the various phases of opinion in accordance with the scheme thus indicated.

VII. THE TORIES.

80. The best interpreter of the lingering remnant of the divine right theories was silence. A mute but dogged resistance to all change was the natural policy of men in whom the spirit of absolute rule survived after its logical groundwork had dropped away. The sentiment, indeed, upon which George III. relied was still vigorous; the selfish factiousness of the aristocracy gave strength to the ruler who at least professed to represent the national will; a strength which afterwards received a great accession from the revolutionary panic. But it was dangerous to look too closely into the reason of the case. The monarchy obviously rested on a parliamentary title, and claims like those of the Stuarts were too gross an anachronism. The only doctrine applicable to the case was that of which Johnson was the natural exponent. Johnson was little fitted for abstract speculation. He was an embodiment of sturdy prejudice, or, in other words, of staunch beliefs which had survived their logical justification. The depth and massiveness of his character redeem his opinions from contempt. His loyalty was absolutely free from the taint of servility. The man who was so profoundly touched by the condescension of his sovereign in once talking to him