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Washington and His Comrades in Arms; a chronicle of the War of Independence by George McKinnon Wrong
page 46 of 195 (23%)
brief period, and for only a brief period, left power in the
hands of a corrupt Parliament and a corrupting king.

Ministers were not all corrupt or place-hunters. One of them, the
Earl of Dartmouth, was a saint in spirit. Lord North, the king's
chief minister, was not corrupt. He disliked his office and
wished to leave it. In truth no sweeping simplicity of
condemnation will include all the ministers of George III except
on this one point that they allowed to dictate their policy a
narrow-minded and ignorant king. It was their right to furnish a
policy and to exercise the powers of government, appoint to
office, spend the public revenues. Instead they let the King say
that the opinions of his ministers had no avail with him. If we
ask why, the answer is that there was a mixture of motives. North
stayed in office because the King appealed to his loyalty, a plea
hard to resist under an ancient monarchy. Others stayed from love
of power or for what they could get. In that golden age of
patronage it was possible for a man to hold a plurality of
offices which would bring to himself many thousands of pounds a
year, and also to secure the reversion of offices and pensions to
his children. Horace Walpole spent a long life in luxurious ease
because of offices with high pay and few duties secured in the
distant days of his father's political power. Contracts to supply
the army and the navy went to friends of the government,
sometimes with disastrous results, since the contractor often
knew nothing of the business he undertook. When, in 1777, the
Admiralty boasted that thirty-five ships of war were ready to put
to sea it was found that there were in fact only six. The system
nearly ruined the navy. It actually happened that planks of a
man-of-war fell out through rot and that she sank. Often ropes
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