The
House of Commons was never stronger than it was in the latter part of
1760. For more than seventy years it had been the first institution in
the State, and for forty-six years the interest of the sovereign had
been to maintain its supremacy. The king was a cipher. Yet a new
king had but to appear to change everything. George III. ascended the
throne with the determination not to be the slave of any minister,
himself the slave of Parliament; and from the day that he became king
to the day that the decline of his faculties enforced his retirement,
his personal power was everywhere felt, and his personal character
everywhere impressed itself on the British world, and to no ordinary
extent on other countries. George III. was not a great man, and it has
been argued that his mind was never really sound; and yet of all men
who then lived, and far more than either Washington or Napoleon, he
gave direction and color and tone to all public events, and to not
a little of private life, and much of his work will have everlasting
endurance. He did not supersede the House of Commons, but he would not
be the simple vizier of that many-headed sultan, which for the most
part became his humble tool.
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