seemed to him a personal affront. All these vexations and
scandals he imagined that his ministers might have averted, if
they had been more solicitous for his honour and for the success
of his great schemes of policy, and less solicitous about their
own popularity. They, on the other hand, continued to assure him,
and, as far as can now be judged, to assure him with perfect
truth, that it was altogether out of their power to effect what
he wished. Something they might perhaps be able to do. Many
members of the House of Commons had said in private that seven
thousand men was too small a number. If His Majesty would let it
be understood that he should consider those who should vote for
ten thousand as having done him good service, there might be
hopes. But there could be no hope if gentlemen found that by
voting for ten thousand they should please nobody, that they
should be held up to the counties and towns which they
represented as turncoats and slaves for going so far to meet his
wishes, and that they should be at the same time frowned upon at
Kensington for not going farther. The King was not to be moved.
He had been too great to sink into littleness without a struggle.
He had been the soul of two great coalitions, the dread of
France, the hope of all oppressed nations. And was he to be
degraded into a mere puppet of the Harleys and the Hooves, a
petty prince who could neither help nor hurt, a less formidable
enemy and less valuable ally than the Elector of Brandenburg or
the Duke of Savoy? His spirit, quite as arbitrary and as
impatient of control as that of any of his predecessors, Stuart,
Tudor or Plantagenet, swelled high against this ignominious
bondage. It was well known at Versailles that he was cruelly
mortified and incensed; and, during a short time, a strange hope
was cherished there that, in the heat of his resentment, he might