The learned and judicious writer to whom is due the first idea of a
"Constitutional History of England," and of whose admirable work I here
venture to offer a continuation, regards "the spirit of the government"
as having been "almost wholly monarchical till the Revolution of 1688,"
and in the four subsequent reigns, with the last of which his volumes
close, as "having turned chiefly to an aristocracy."[1] And it may be
considered as having generally preserved that character through the long
and eventful reign of George III. But, even while he was writing, a
change was already preparing, of which more than one recent occurrence
had given unmistakable warning. A borough had been disfranchised for
inveterate corruption in the first Parliament of George IV.[2] Before
its dissolution, the same House of Commons had sanctioned the principle
of a state endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, and had
given a third reading to a bill for the abolition of all civil
restrictions affecting members of that religion. It was impossible to
avoid foreseeing that the Parliamentary Reform inaugurated by the
disfranchisement of Grampound would soon be carried farther, or that the
emancipation, as it was termed, of all Christian sects was at least
equally certain not to be long delayed. And it will be denied by no one
that those measures, which had no very obscure or doubtful connection
with each other, have gradually imparted to the constitution a far more
democratic tinge than would have been willingly accepted by even the
most liberal statesman of the preceding century, or than, in the days of
the Tudors or of the Stuarts, would have been thought compatible with
the maintenance of the monarchy.

When George III. came to the throne, he found the nation engaged in a
war which was occupying its arms not only on the Continent of Europe,
but in India and America also, and was extending her glory and her