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 appointment 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; in
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 Westminster; 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_.
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