carefully transmitted to us, he will not allow us | troops and their allies, without the means despondency to find a place in his breast, but of extrication, without provisions, without resolve not merely out of duty to fill his post, hope, the King did not despair. Every one but will resolve with vigour to meet every obsta- in England and no one more clearly than cle that may arise, he shall meet with most cor- Lord North saw the coming blow. The dial support from me; but the times require vigour, or the state will be ruined.' (Vol. ii. King alone did not or would not see it. To him, indeed, faith was the evidence of things pp. 215, 216.) unseen. When all upon the western horizon was to others but one huge cloud chargit presented a silver lining of light and ed with gloom and storm, to the King alone lated and success had crowned the arms of hope. Even when Cornwallis had capituthe insurgents, the King, still ignorant of the event, wrote thus to Lord North: After France and Spain had openly allied themselves with the insurgent Colonies, the King, in answer to one of Lord North's many suggestions of a change of Ministry, wrote thus:- Before I will ever hear of any man's readiness to come into office, I will expect to see it signed under his hand that he is resolved to keep the empire entire, and that no troops shall be consequently withdrawn from thence, nor independence ever allowed.' In 1781 only a few months before Cornwallis's capitulation, he thus comments on Fox's motion for a committee to consider the American War: : 'Windsor, June 13th, 1781. 'It is difficult to express which appears more : 'Windsor, November 3rd, 1781. know what news has been brought this day by With such We have now quoted abundantly from this very interesting correspondence, which derives additional value from the care bestowed by its conscientious editor Mr. Even two months later, he says: Should Donne. 6 And what is the impression which France not supply America amply, I think it leaves on our minds respecting the King's it has the appearance that this long contest character and capacity? On the whole, it will end as it ought, by the Colonies return- is, we think, not an unfavourable impresing to the mother country; and I confess sion. But it is more favourable to him as a I will never put my hands to any other man than as a King, certainly as a constituconclusion of this business.' Lastly, when tional King. Firmness hardened into invinciCornwallis was hemmed in by the American ble obstinacy, a love of authority and control, which, could it have been fully gratified, buked a courtly preacher for a too adulatory would have left very little room for the ac- sermon, and how he had written to Most tion of Parliament; and an habitual prejudice Reverend Prelates to express his disapproagainst individual statesmen which is in- bation of the secular festivities which had compatible with the principles of a limited violated the traditional sanctity of episcomonarchy. Had George III. been born pal palaces. At a period later than that of heir to absolute sovereignty, his reign would Lord North's Ministry good and thoughtful have been one of the luckiest accidents pos- persons were melted into tears at the specsible for his subjects. He had certain qual- tacle of the aged monarch going to the ities which win for absolute monarchs the great metropolitan cathedral to return humloyalty of their people and the devotion of ble thanks to the Almighty for His goodness their personal adherents. His theory of in restoring him from the dread darkness government somewhat resembled that of of a malady worse than death, to life, reason, the governor of a crown colony, assisted but and health. They knew too that on occanot controlled, by his council. As it was, sions which made Ministers and Privy CounGeorge III. was after 1790 extremely pop- cillors mute through fear, the King alone ular with the bulk of the English people, had breathed courage into the cowed and who knew nothing of his relations towards hesitating circle. It was to his promptitude the leaders of political parties, and cared and spirit that London owed its rescue from little for the punctilios of constitutional gov- the anarchy, at once shameful and terrible, ernment. To the traders and bankers out- with which the grotesque fanaticism of Lord side the circle of metropolitan agitation G. Gordon had afflicted it. It was the King to the squirearchy in the country, to the who took down on the spot Wedderburn's middle-class inhabitants of provincial towns opinion that the troops might be legally emabove all, to the clergy and the yeoman- ployed: it was the King who ordered them ry, it was a matter of supreme indifference to be called out: it was the King who dethat their King was suspected of intriguing clared his readiness to lead them. When to oust George Grenville, or of circumvent- an angry mob pelted the royal carriage on ing Lord Rockingham, or of conspiring to its way to Westminster, and his courtiers make the Great Commoner unpopular, or turned pale at the rude assault, the King holding in reserve a corps of devoted official alone was calm and undismayed; when fired Janizaries prepared to upset his recognised at in the theatre, he alone of the royal parMinisters. To some of them the worst of ty retained his composure. It was in no these suspicions appeared - and we think, vaunting spirit of fictitious bravery, then, justly appeared · to be destitute of founda- that the King had written in 1775, when tion. To the majority they appeared utterly incendiary hand-bills were circulated about unimportant. They saw in the King a man the streets of London to prevent the meetwho practised the virtues which they them- ing of Parliament: These hand-bills are selves most admired, and reflected the prej- certainly spread to cause terror: that they udices by which they themselves were main- may in the timid Duke (sc. of Grafton) I ly actuated. He was temperate, he was saw yesterday; but I thank God I am not frugal, he was industrious, he was devout, of that make. I know what my duty to my he was courageous, he was affectionate. country makes me undertake, and threats Did not the King work harder at public cannot prevent me from doing that to the business than the generality of merchants fullest extent.' Indeed, next to gambling worked at their own? Was not his dinner and debauchery he seems to have had the the model of a gentleman-farmer's family most utter aversion to cowardice. He is dinner? Did not the King ride about the never tired of sneering at the pusillanimity country without pomp, and talk to yeomen which made the Duke of Grafton desert him, and farmers like the good farmer George' and contrasting it with the courage shown that he was? Did he not keep his accounts by Lord North in confronting the dangers with marvellous minuteness? Did he not and responsibilities of office. If his courage date each of his letters with a methodical and firmness degenerated into an obstinacy precision and particularity unrivalled by which resisted the eloquence of reasoning scriveners, bankers, and lawyers? Again, and the logic of facts, a few brilliant stateshad not they seen him on the day of his men or profound philosophers might deride coronation, unadvised by precedent or a stubborn temper which the King shared counsel, bimself doff the Royal Crown that with half the ploughboys and carters in his he might with becoming humility partake of kingdom; but the great majority of the nathe Holy Communion? They knew too tion was proud to think that the King had the how, on ascending the throne, he had re-fortitude to maintain opinions which were common to themselves and their sovereign. Indeed, as we observed many years ago in reviewing the Memoirs of Lord Sidmouth, the prejudices of George III. were the prejudices of almost all contemporary Englishmen. Did the King set his face steadily against conciliation with America? his obstinacy only reflected the obstinacy of the country. His bigotry towards the American Colonists was no more peculiar to himself than was his bigotry at a later period towards the Roman Catholics. In either case he was only a more vehement partisan of a party which included three-fourths of the educated and wealthy classes. Burke so early as the year 1774 writes in this strain to Lord Rockingham: Even those who are most likely to be overwhelmed by any real American confusion are among the most supine. The character of the Ministry either produces or perfectly coincides with the disposition of the public. Even John Wesley indited a lecture to the Colonists on the wickedness of their insurrection, and concluded with these words: Our sins never will be removed until we fear God and honour the King.' We have already quoted passages more than enough to show the King's obdurate pertinacity on this subject. Judging as we do after the event, we are ready to pile epithets of condemnation on an obstinacy which only made the final concession more abject and humiliating. A better knowledge also of the geographical conditions of the country has convinced us that, even had we succeeded in the immediate object of the war, we could not have succeeded in the permanent government of a country so vast, so distant, and so accessible to all the vagrant populations of the earth, as all North America. But if we try to place ourselves in the position of Englishmen living in the year 1775, we may find reason to acquit the King of that blind and stupid insensibility which is so unjustly laid to his exclusive charge, on every point save one. It was not more unnatural for an English monarch in those days to desire to maintain the integrity of his kingdom than it was for the President of the American Republic in our time to desire to maintain the integrity of the Union. Nor did the conflict seem dangerous. At the beginning of the contest, few people could reasonably have doubted that Great Britain must prevail. Not only were the resources of the Colonies so small, but their councils were so distracted, and their jealousies so rife, that a vigorous and well-concerted strategy must have rendered their harmonious action impossible, and have paralysed their first efforts. Even after Burgoyne's miserable surrender, the Revolutionary Councils were divided by fear or faction, while their armies were weakened by apathy, by privation, by irregular supplies of food and more irregular supplies of money. Ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-paid, in many cases forced by leaders of whom they knew little into a service for which they cared less, the soldiers of the insurgent army might have often been cut up or hemmed in by commanders who combined activity and intelligence with professional knowledge. Only within the year which preceded the final disaster at York Town, the capture of Charlestown had nearly brought back the Carolinas to their loyal subjection. In the very year which witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington had been sorely tried by the wide-spread discontent of most of his troops, and by the open mutiny of others. Had we possessed a general of acknowledged and commanding ability, the Colonists might even then have been subdued. But it was the misfortune of England to have no commander equal to the emergencies of this war. Well has Lord Stanhope written: It was the bane of England, not merely on this occasion but throughout the whole early part of this war, to have for chiefs men brave indeed and honourable, skilled in the details of the service, but in genius fitter only for a second place, not gifted by nature with that energy and firmness essential for a chief command.' Clinton and Cornwallis were superior to Burgoyne and Gage; but Clinton and Cornwallis had a private feud of their own, and were to have fought a duel on the termination of the campaign. Had Clive had the conduct of the war, he would have probably conducted it to a different issue. Accustomed to incorporate foreign and barbarous races with English troops, he might have infused into the dull and listless levies of Hessian mercenaries some of that fire and spirit which he had breathed into his Sepoy followers on the plain of Plassy. But at an early stage of the war Clive had in a paroxysm of madness put an end to his own life. The conduct of the war was therefore left to the Howes, the Clintons, and the Burgoynes. The blindness of the King showed itself not in his original estimate of the probability of success, but in his continuing to retain the same opinion, when he sent such men as the English generals of the day to contend against such a man as Washington. In holding to this view, he he must in 1781 have shown himself exceptionally obstinate and sanguine. And we cannot help regarding this obstinate hope and its mournful disappointment as the indications of a Nemesis which visited the King for his treatment of Lord Chatham. When we trace the misfortunes of this epoch of his reign we cannot but share in the regret which the City of London so often expressed at the time, that Lord Chatham was not at the head of the Government. He certainly was the only Minister able either to conquer or conciliate America. His name was loved and respected in America. The heads of the Revolutionary party looked up to him and would have been persuaded by his reasoning to effect a reconciliation, while it was yet possible. If a compromise had been proved to be impossible, the country would have profited by the genius of the greatest War Minister that it ever possessed. The Minister who had made loyal soldiers of the Jacobite clans, who had fostered the military genius of Wolfe and of Clive, who had smitten the House of Bourbon in its pride the same Minister might have averted defeat and re-established the supremacy of Eng land in America. True it is that in the last Ministry in which he had taken part, the symptoms of the mysterious malady which afflicted his latter years had developed themselves with increased frequency and severity. His irresolution, his waywardness, his isolation from his colleagues, his strange irritability and his stranger silence, had driven the poor Duke of Grafton to despair. Still. the force and fire which he threw into the debates in which he spoke during the last years of his Opposition, demonstrated that he still retained more than sparks of the energy by which he had not only saved but exalted his country. Whether his mind could then have born the continuous strain of official and parliamentary labour, and whether in the later passages of the conflict with the Colonies he could have secured an honourable compromise, is doubtful. But had he been retained in office by the King, and succeeded in keeping his Administration together, his position would have inspired confidence; and Lord North himself would gladly have made way for him. The King, however, dreaded the return of that dominating and dictatorial Minister. At the beginning of 1778 he writes: I solemnly declare nothing shall bring me to treat personally with Lord Chatham,' that perfidious man, as he styles him in the same let: ter. Whatever might, or might not, have then been the success of Chatham as Minister, his rejection was mainly due to the personal prejudices of the King, assisted by Chatham's own inability to remain long ་ united to any section of political parties. This obstinacy was highly censurable in the sovereign of a limited monarchy, but, as we have said before, it reflected rather than resisted the general feeling of the King's subjects. Apart from these personal qualities of courage, industry, punctuality, and devotional feelings, which gave a character to the public. conduct of George III., there were incidents in his private life which awakened the affectionate sympathy of his people. The romantic love passage in his youth with the beautiful Quakeress, Hannah Lightfoot, was, we are inclined to think, an idle invention,* but his ardent attachment to Lady Sarah Lennox, proved that he had a warm and susceptible heart; as the restraint which he imposed upon his inclinations, and the decorous tenor of his married life, proved that his sense of duty was stronger than his passions. While dissoluteness prevailed in almost every foreign Court, and profligacy reigned unabashed in the fashionable circles of London, homely and sober Englishmen reflected with pride that the family which was the purest in morals was also the highest in rank. The King's domestic character rallied the enthusiastic loyalty of the people round the throne in the darkest times. Whether Wilkes scattered his seditious scurrilities among the dregs of the London rabble, or Beckford at the head of the City Corporation insulted the Sovereign on his throne, or men's minds were dismayed by the double horror of foreign war and intestine mutiny, the King's name was a tower of strength to thousands. Nor was it only a recognition of the King's morality and piety that elicited a loyalty as rapturous as that which had welcomed the second Stuart back, and far more lasting. The people knew that their King had borne sorrows and sufferings, such as seldom fall to the lot of men in a private station. The galling insinuations against his mother, made doubly galling by the malignant asperity of faction, had planted a wound which time perhaps never healed. He had been hurt by the marriage of one brother, and pained by the profligacy * Mr. Donne and Mr. Jesse have both treated this ridiculous story more seriously than it deserves. Mr. Thomas has recently shown in a pamphlet retended narrative is a tissue of improbabilities and published from Notes and Queries' that the precontradictions, and that no trace of evidence in support of it can be found of earlier date than a paper in the Monthly Magazine' for April, 1821. There is great reason to believe that this story emanated and that it is about as true and authentic as the le from the authors of the Wilmot-Serres forgeries, gitimacy of the notorious Princess Olive. of another. One sister had made a misera- | prayer went up for the restoration of the ble marriage and met a painful death. An- aged monarch, and that from the meetingother was hunted from her home by the ar- house and the synagogue unstudied supplimies of Napoleon. Then came that terrible cations arose, before the prelates of the Esdisease, that clouding of the reason - that tablished Church had decided in what terms degradation of the man and the monarch to to invoke Heaven on behalf of the blind and the condition of a chained animal, the sport afflicted King? It is not for us to heap unof brutal keepers, and, worse than that, the due eulogy on the memory of George III. sport of graceless sons and their miserable We consider some of his political errors to parasites and lastly, that utter eclipse of have been most grave, and his theory of light, sense, and mind, which, more awful kingly government pernicious. But we than death, presaged the slow approach of cannot now, at the interval of nearly fifty death. years, blind ourselves to the solid virtues which won for him, at the close of his life, a more profound sympathy and more loyal love, than were ever earned by English King before, or by any English monarch, except Elisabeth alone. When, after years of painful and unparalleled exertion, after sacrificing thousands of lives and millions of treasure, England welcomed to her capital the sovereigns to whose emancipation and victories she had mainly contributed when the shouting multitudes hailed as the most illustrious figure in that brilliant company their own great chieftain, whose courage and energy had redeemed the honour of the English arms and the liberties of European states - when anthems of grateful triumph pealed in solemn temples and festive halls- then did the minds of many turn from the dazzling pageantry and echoing clamours of this unwonted jubilee to the dark chamber of the palace, wherein paced the lonely King, old, sightless, and mindless, or with only so much flickering reason left as to know its own normal eclipse. Few pictures can be imagined more affecting than an incident which occurred in that time of dreary seclusion. One day, the Prince of Wales coming to the room in which his father was confined, stood at the door and, listening, overheard the old man declaiming the plaintive lines of Milton, ject broached by the Report of the Fishery Oh dark, dark, dark! Amid the blaze of noon presented to the Rivers Pollution Commission- O first-created beam! and Thou Great Word, "Let there be light!" and light was over all, Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?' When his people saw and thought of these dread sufferings- when they remembered what he who bore them had gone through - how nobly and courageously he had discharged the duties of his station according to his own imperfect view of them - how he had worked harder than most of his Ministers, and hoped more confidently than most of his people, and, in the tension of political strife, had demeaned himself towards his humbler subjects with all the simplicity of frank and kindly man - is it wonderful that among all classes and all sects, a loyal a ers, and tried with success at Huddersfield on the dye-waters. It remains to be seen what their judgment may be, and whether it will be enacted that the use of some such press shall be made imperative on our manufacturers; but I have been told that its operation on the water from paper-mills was completely satisfactory. At Huddersfield, this machine produced a verification that was unexpected by me at any rate in operating on the black dye-water. Much oxide of iron was extracted; this proved to be one of the ingredients in the black dye, and from the fugitive characters of the other adjuncts to that production, there became recognizable at once the truth of the description, "of either this or some other such invention will be a rusty suit of black." I am quite sure that found to impart a very different character to our rivers, and assist in the most material manner in rendering them fit receptacles of animal life. J. C. G. in Athenæum. |