port of government, and is more at liberty to choose and act as he pleases. Your ministers, Sir, are only your instruments of government.

King (smiles). Ministers are the king in this country. Chancellor. If one person is permitted to engross the ear of the Crown, and invest himself with all its power, he will become so in effect. But that is far from being the case now, and I know of no man in your Majesty's service that aims at it. Sir, the world without doors is full of making schemes of an administration for your Majesty for the future, but whatever be your intention for the future, I humbly beg that you would not spoil your business for the present.

King. I suppose you will take care of that. If you do not or have not success, the nation will require it at your hands.

Chancellor. If right measures are not pursued, or proper care taken, then the nation will require it; but success is in no man's power, and that success must greatly depend upon your Majesty's showing a proper countenance and support to your servants, and to what you have already done.1

1 Harris, "Life of Hardwicke," Vol. II. p. 108 et seq.

CHAPTER VII

PARLIAMENT UNDER THE FIRST TWO GEORGES

Increased importance of the House of Commons - Result of appointing Parliamentary leaders as ministers - Trained statesmen among the Commons -The Septennial Act - The power of the purse - Walpole makes the Lower House the scene of actionWhence necessity of always having a prominent minister in Commons - Newcastle tries to avoid this Sir Thomas Robinson as leader of the Commons - Fox resigns as leader because of insufficient power - Murray refuses to accept the leadership — Resignation of Newcastle - Pitt without a party in the House of Commons Waldegrave cannot find a leader for the Commons -Yet no large proportion of ministers in Commons - House of Lords nominates many members of House of Commons Organization of Commons on party lines-Walpole the originator of party government - His methods-Organization of the opposition - Impeachments of Oxford and Bolingbroke the last political impeachments in England — Influence of the country on Parliament and the ministers - The Septennial ActPopular excitement over elections of 1741-Statesmen alarmed by popular influence on politics Parliamentary reporting Walpole withdraws Excise Bill out of deference to public opinion - Pitt the first popular Prime Minister.

proceed to a study of the increase in Parliamentary power during the first half of the eighteenth

century would, after the investigations of the last chapter, seem almost superfluous. For the advance which Parliament made during that period lay in the fact that it became more and more the minister-creating body, the government-making organ. This has been sufficiently noticed in dealing with the decline of the royal power. But while this, the main fact, has already been treated, there were certain changes in the constitution and organization of Parliament itself which deserve special attention; certain developments by which Parliament was assisted to gain its ascendency, and fitted to exercise it when gained.

The most important of these changes was the change in the relative position of the two Houses, the elevation of the House of Commons, for all practical purposes, over the House of Lords. The importance of this, in connection with our subject, cannot be overestimated. Had the House of Lords continued in fact as well as in name the Upper House, the present system of Cabinet government could scarcely have been worked out. For the life principle of that system is the organization of the various forces of the country on party lines. It is obvious that the House of Lords, a permanent body, and in great measure divorced from popular interests, could not have been made the starting-point for such an organization.

At the period of the Restoration, and for a long time

subsequent to it, the House of Lords played a more important part in the state than did the House of Commons. This greater prominence of the Upper House was largely the result of superior merit. But ever since the Revolution the Commons had been gaining in strength. The custom of choosing ministers from among the Parliamentary leaders had much to do with this. For inasmuch as the Lower House was the changeable House, it was the temper of that House which was taken into consideration in making changes in the ministry.

Moreover, the Commons were beginning to train statesmen of their own, equal, if not superior, to any that were to be found in the House of Lords. This was partly due to the fact that they were so necessary. To reduce the mob which composed the Lower House to anything like order, strong men able to grapple with great questions and to control the violent passions of their fellows were needed. The demand produced the supply. But further, not only in the House of Commons, but throughout the country, the thirty years which followed immediately upon the Revolution were years of great political activity. One who lived in the early part of the reign of George I. has left it as his opinion, that at that time there was hardly a man in England who was not a freethinker in politics, and did not have some peculiar notions of his own, by which he dis

tinguished himself from the rest of the community. "Our island," he says, "which was formerly called a nation of saints, may now be called a nation of statesmen." 1 Therefore, we are not surprised to find that many of the abler political leaders of this period sprang from the people. Still, the House of Commons was not as yet strong enough to keep the eminent men whom it had brought into public notice. They were soon transferred to the House of Lords. A great Commoner still looked forward to a peerage rather than to the leadership of his own House.

Under the first two Georges, there was a rapid increase in the power and importance of the Commons. The causes for this were mainly three, - the Septennial Act, the Power of the Purse, and Sir Robert Walpole. We will consider these in turn.

During the reign of William III. a Triennial Act had been passed. This had been done, not with the intention of decreasing the power of the House of Commons, but rather with a view to limiting the authority of the Crown. The object had been to prevent the King from keeping indefinitely a House of Commons which pleased him, to make a repetition of the long pensioned Parliament of Charles II. impossible. Nor was the Septennial Act framed with the idea of increasing the power of the Lower House. It was introduced simply 1 Freeholder, p. 63.