administration a common contribution is indispensable. Thus after a few years they fell under the military dictator, and the republic, the mother of the military dictator, under whose shadow they still remain.

"La Société Française," says M. Lavasseur (1911), “malgré tous les changements de régime politique qu'elle a subis, et malgré les modifications de son état social reste constituée sur les fondements de droit civil, et même en grande partie d'organisation administrative que la Révolution et le Consulat ont posés."

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The modern French historian will tell you that the result of the fournaise of the Revolution is "une France rajeunie, dotée d'institutions libérales et égalitaires.' An Englishman who is no reactionary may be forgiven for believing that the result has been to destroy all that is good and moral and honest in France, and to leave her without religion and without either liberty or equality, a menace to the civilized world.

ii. The New Rulers of Europe; Gustavus III. of Sweden, 1771-1792, George III., 1760-1820.-I have dwelt on the war of the Austrian succession, and on the Seven Years' War at much greater length than I should have wished in a book which is neither military nor naval history. The operations of these wars throw so much light on later events both in the East Indies, in Europe, and on the American continent, that I have not found a shorter summary desirable. It is necessary to emphasize the torpid formality of the operations in these wars, so far as they were not lightened by the new Prussian methods of warfare on land and the unexpected decision at times of British captains at sea, if one would appreciate how the revolutionary spirit, defying at once all authority and all historical precedent, remade or modified the conditions of warfare as well as the occupations of peace in Europe in the latter half of the century.

The situation which confronted George III. on his accession was similar to that which had to be met by the rulers of France, Spain, Austria and Sweden, of all countries, in fact, where the tendency of thought claimed for the people a voice in the management of affairs, a share of authority.

The difference between the Continent and the islands lay in

the tradition of autocratic rule both in Church and State, which hampered or directed the reforming rulers on the Continent in their dealings with the new forms of thought, as opposed to the tradition of restraint by the common law on the Crown as well as on the people, which, while giving great opening to the demagogue and patriot for mischief, strengthened the hands of the King who worked within these narrow bounds in the islands. Each of the new rulers facing the demand for a broader structure of society had in turn to settle their relations with the feudal decadency of Europe, with the oligarchies of great nobles who, asserting their privileges over the nation as a whole, overshadowed or threatened the kingship, while they used to foment disobedience and disorder, as all oligarchies do, the confused moral and social instincts of the mob. On the Continent such conflict tended either to strengthen unduly the powers of the Crown, or to lead to anarchy and revolution, as the Reformers overthrew the authority of King, Church, and Law based on Roman supremacy in the islands the King, so far as he kept within the law, combined with the people against the oligarchy and their town mobs.

As a Continental example, when in 1771 Gustavus III., aged, like George III., 22 years, ascended the throne of Sweden, the description of the political conditions given by Brougham in 1845 (Statesmen of the Time of George III.) might have passed for those of Britain before 1770. "The Crown of Sweden was a mere pageant of State, wholly destitute of power . . . the real power of the State was certainly in the hands of an aristocracy who ruled through the medium of the Senate, an assembly of nominal representatives of the country in which the order of the nobles bore sway. The Senate, in fact, governed the country. In them was vested almost all the patronage of the State: they could compel meetings of the Diet at any time; they even claimed the command of the army, and issued their orders to the troops without the King's consent." Yet three years previously the King, Adolphus Frederick, joined with the people, had tried a fall with the Senate and had thrown them. Gustavus, at first helpless, accepted his position of impotence. But after about a year and a half, with the apparent consent of the people, he, supported by France and his army, made a revolution, arresting the Senators and revising the constitution

to the advantage of the Crown, destroying the Senate and the States. Then he engaged in war with Russia unsuccessfully by sea and land. In the end he was assassinated.

In France, meanwhile, there had arisen between the King and the local Parlements of nobles and permanent officials a struggle over taxation, which was finally to end in revolution. Louis XV. from 1763-5 dissolved in anger the Parlement of Brittany and forbade local Parlements to combine. In 1770 he quashed the prosecution by the Parlement of Brittany of its Governor, the Duke d'Aiguillon. Then the Parlement of Paris issued an arrêt forbidding the Duke to exercise any of the functions of nobility. The King issued a counter decree other local Parlements supporting Paris and Brittany, he took violent measures against them. Then he set to work to remodel or annihilate all the Parlements of France, withdrawing pensions, allowances and offices from those who refused to obey. He called to a Bed of Justice at Versailles all the Princes of the Blood. The result should have been a warning to the King, for, standing by the noble order, with one exception they refused to come. The King also ordered the registration of all royal edicts as compulsory, banishing the Parlement of Paris for refusal to comply, a refusal, says an historian, very patriotic of them, for some of them had paid very highly for their seats. When in 1774 Louis XV. died of the smallpox, Louis XVI., the reformer, restored the Parlements, but forbade their union.

In the islands the contests were not between the King and the Parliament as such, but between the factions of Whig ministers who from time to time could command a sufficient majority in Parliament. The King never attempted any violent measures against his opponents. But it is a common accusation of Whig writers that, while not disputing the authority of Parliament, he claimed the right to choose his own ministers, and that he was careful to impress on them his own opinions as to action, an exercise of sovereignty which so far as it was true they call as abuse an attempt at personal government. All government is personal. At this time, before the King had become a mere figurehead, while his right in practice to choose his own ministers was hardly questioned, the greater personal responsibility of the ministers for their advice and actions was leading to the distinction among themselves of

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one leading person as prime minister, who should stand in the forefront of their personal relations both to the King and to Parliament.

George III. may be said to have been the first example of our constitutional sovereign, in the modern sense, though his powers, like those of the American President of the present day, whose office was copied from him, were far more extensive than those of later sovereigns. His reign was, throughout, one of transition from a social state, in which the whole burden of government rested on the King and on the officers appointed by him, to a system of government in which the officers, who had acquired power from above and from below, from their appointment by the King, and from their supposed responsibility to the electors, by whose votes they had become members of the House of Commons, became the real rulers of the State. This responsibility could only be partial so long as universal corruption governed the votes of the electors: the change was very slow indeed, maturing gradually throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was accompanied, as it came about, by a transfer of power from the great peers to the Commons, a change placing the King in the very difficult position of antagonism to the Great Whig noble families who then controlled the House of Commons, as well as to the anarchical mob of which, in the absence of police, the Whig peers made use to attack the Crown. It may be said that throughout the first part of his reign he fought these two evil influences single-handed, backed only by the silent body of respectable citizens.

In King George's day the transition was slowly reaching the stable balance of the division of powers: the King, as chief of the executive, struggling for the right to appoint his own ministers and to supervise and assist them in their work, and the ministers tending gradually to assert their independence of the King's view so long as they could obtain a majority of the representatives in the House of Commons in support of their own. The change presupposes that, instead of each minister being severally appointed by and responsible to the King, all ranged themselves under the Prime Minister, who, theoretically appointed by the King, automatically takes office, if he has the support of the House of Commons. During the first forty years of George III.'s reign the only strong ministers

who held office to any purpose were non-party men, the elder and younger Pitt, Bute and North.

It was a moral and social instinct which aligned the reforming kings on the side of the nations against the oligarchy of nobles. The deep-seated difficulty of any movement for enlargement of power is that the class which obtains the advantage of greater power and freedom, though it may have been gained in the interests of all, strives at any cost to keep it for itself at the expense of those weaker and less free. For this purpose the privileged class, whether the English Whigs, or the Swedish Senate, or the French nobles, sought to obtain and keep control of the political machine, and of the opinions and accounts of its working as reported by the pamphleteer or the journal. The strong argument for kingship lies in the fact that the King is presumed to represent not a party but the whole people over whom he rules.

The statement frequently repeated by historians, a fiction which has passed into our history, that King George interfered in political questions in Parliament is wholly false. His position may be summarized in a letter written to the younger Pitt on March 20th, 1785, on the subject of Parliamentary reform-" Mr. Pitt must recollect that, though I have thought it unfortunate that he had early engaged himself in this measure, yet that I have ever said that, as he was clear of the propriety of the measure, he ought to lay his thoughts before the House; that out of personal regard to him I should avoid giving any opinion to anyone on the opening of the door to Parliamentary reform except to him. Therefore I am certain Mr. Pitt cannot suspect my having influenced anyone on the occasion if others choose for base ends to impute such a conduct to me I must bear it as former false suggestions. Indeed, on a question of such magnitude, I should think very ill of any man who took a part on either side without the utmost consideration, and who would suffer his civility to anyone to make him vote contrary to his own opinion.'

The letter is of value, not only as expressing the King's attitude towards measures brought forward in Parliament, but as putting directly in issue the matter upon which the whole history of British politics at that time turns, the credibility of the parties. The position outlined in this letter was met by

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