The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863 by Various
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page 4 of 277 (01%)
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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_. The American War, the long exclusion of the Liberal party, the French Revolution, the Catholic question, are all sad monuments of his real power." This is a true picture of George III., and why it should be supposed that no descendant of that monarch will ever be able to make himself potently felt in the government of his Empire we are at a loss to understand. The exact part of that monarch would not be repeated, the world having changed so much as to render such repetition impossible; but the end at which George III. aimed, and which he largely accomplished for himself, that end being the vindication of the monarchical element in the British polity, might be undertaken by one of his great-grandsons with every reason to expect success. The means employed would have to be different from those which George III. made use of, but that would prove nothing against the project itself. The men who followed Cromwell to the Long Parliament and the men who |
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