generation of corrupt practice and the final defeat of Stuart hopes had
already deprived the Whigs of any special hold on their past ideals.
They were divided already into factions the purpose of which was no more
than the avid pursuit of place and pension. Government by connection
proved itself irreconcilable with good government. But it showed also
that once corruption was centralized there was no limit to its
influence, granted only the absence of great questions. When George III
transferred that organization from the office of the minister to his own
court, there was already a tolerable certainty of his success. For more
than forty years the Tories had been excluded from office; and they
were more than eager to sell their support. The Church had become the
creature of the State. The drift of opinion in continental Europe was
towards benevolent despotism. The narrow, obstinate and ungenerous mind
of George had been fed on high notions of the power he might exert. He
had been taught the kingship of Bolingbroke's glowing picture; and a
reading in manuscript of the seventh chapter of Blackstone's first book
can only have confirmed the ideals he found there. Nor was it obvious
that a genuine kingship would have been worse than the oligarchy of the
great Whig families.

What made it worse, and finally impossible, was the character of the
king. The pathetic circumstances of his old age have combined somewhat
to obscure the viciousness of his maturity. He was excessively ignorant
and as obstinate as arbitrary. He trusted no one but himself, and he
totally misunderstood the true nature of his office. There is no
question which arose in the first forty years of his reign in which he
was not upon the wrong side and proud of his error. He was wrong about
Wilkes, wrong about America, wrong about Ireland, wrong about France. He
demanded servants instead of ministers. He attacked every measure for
the purification of the political system. He supported the Slave trade