shall be the scene of a new struggle for power, with the aristocracy
on the one side, and the sovereign and most of the people on the
other. A nation like England cannot exist long with weakness
organized for its government, and there is nothing in the condition
of Parliament or of parties that allows us to suppose that from them
strength could proceed, any more than that grapes could be gathered
from thorns or figs from thistles. A monarch who should effect the
change indicated might be called a usurper, and certainly would be a
revolutionist; but, as Mommsen says, "Any revolution or any usurpation
is justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to
govern,"--and government is what most nations now stand most in need
of. The reason why George III.'s conduct is generally condemned is,
that he was a clumsy creature, and that he made a bad use of the power
which he monopolized, or sought to monopolize, his whole course being
unrelieved by a single trait of genius, or even of that tact which is
the genius of small minds.


It has been charged upon the princes of the House of Hanover that they
are given to quarrelling, and that between sovereign and heir-apparent
there has never been good-will, while they have on several occasions
disgusted the world by the vehemence of their hatred for each other.
That George I. hated his heir is well known; and George II. hated his
son Frederick with far more intensity than he himself had been hated
by his own father. The Memoirs of Lord Hervey show the state of
feeling that existed in the English royal family during the first
third of the reign of George II., and the spectacle is hideous beyond
parallel; and for many years longer, until Frederick's death,
there was no abatement of paternal and filial hate. George III.
was disgusted with his eldest son's personal conduct and political