FUSION OF THE UPPER AND MIDDLE CLASSES. 429

but cherished the ancient Anglican church which St. Augustine had planted. They have, in short, fashioned the national career, its pervading character, public opinion, general policy, domestic manners, habits, and usages. The latent or prostrate interests of society have been quickened into life or made buoyant by their influence. This is strictly applicable to Agriculture. At the close of the Plantagenet and baronial wars, this staple interest of the community had fallen into neglect, and the entire kingdom was only saved from desolation by the able policy, rural and commercial, initiated by the first Tudors.

However, there is a danger of falling into extravagance, in dwelling only on the bright side of so seductive a theme. The pursuits of commerce and manufactures have not been without their drawbacks. Of these deductions, religious divisions, inebriety, and the pauperism and crimes of our cities and towns are not the least considerable. If not devoted to commerce themselves, the governing classes cannot be said to have been adverse to its progress, but have honoured it, and sought to render it more liberal in spirit by abating the tendency to monopoly to which mere trade is prone. The illustrious family of the Greshams, who may be reckoned among the earliest of our merchant-princes, were objects of special distinction from the greatest of our sovereigns. Under the Stuarts, the advantages of trade and the useful arts had become so apparent that they had almost ceased to be degrading. The change of manners they had wrought, and the intermixture of the higher and middle ranks by marriages, induced the gentry, and even the younger branches of the nobility, Mr. Chalmers says, "to bind their sons apprentices to merchants, and thereby shed lustre on pursuits before deemed only gainful; to invigorate traffic by their greater capitals, or to extend

its operation by superior knowledge and connection with powerful interests." This spirit continued uninterruptedly to operate to a much later period, until, either by family alliances or elevation, the number of those whose honours were due to the accumulation of riches by trade began to form a considerable numerical proportion of the Peerage.

The attribution of merit in the rearing of the fabric of our national greatness seems hardly to call for further elucidation. It is not a single but a joint production. No party, class, nor individual, can arrogate the exclusive distinction. All have concurred, and our progress is the slow result of united and accumulated efforts. England has had no Solon nor Lycurgus to found and rear the superstructure of her laws and institutions; no single warrior has stretched her territorial limits round the globe; nor has any moral teacher at once struck out the forms and obligations of private life. All, as I have elsewhere observed, has been gradual; native, not incorporated or transplanted in maturity from others, but the growth of the soil during ages; the offspring less of genius than of protracted agency and long-continued experimental efforts. Essentially, the nation has been its own architect; has been less remarkable for the production of single persons of surpassing power in arts, arms, or statesmanship, than for the spontaneous growth of average capabilities exceeding in the aggregate those of neighbouring kingdoms. But though perhaps it may be necessary to concede that the lone stars of intellect which have risen amongst us may have been few in number, they have been of matchless force and lustre; and the names of Bacon, Newton, Shakspeare, Milton, and Locke may be justly held equal, if not superior, to the brightest luminaries of any other age or country.

LATER GROWTH OF BRITISH CIVILISATION.

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British civilisation, it may be further observed, eminent as it may be, is in some directions more derivative than original, and of later growth than in continental countries. For this following of neighbouring states, the reasons are not difficult to assign. Our island was doubtless first peopled at a later period than the continent, and at a later period, and for a shorter term received and had the benefit of Roman example, laws, and institutions. After the Romans followed the long turbulent era of the Anglo-Saxons; these troubles were healed by the Conquest, but not without entailing fresh distractions. The Norman chieftains, who had shared England among them, also held possessions in France, and hence arose a fierce and protracted struggle for the phantom crown of that kingdom. These ended in the entire expulsion of the English from the French soil; apparently a national reverse, but truly a great gain to England. Its fruits, however, were not immediately reaped. Without an external enemy to combat, the barons quarrelled among themselves; and it was only at the close of the sanguinary strife between the Houses of York and Lancaster, in 1485, that England began to breathe in peace. She had then everything to learn or to establish in commerce, manufactures, navigation, and the arts. She proved an eager and apt scholar, as has been depicted on a former occasion (Chapter XV.): and having thus briefly described or recapitulated the chief steps in British advances up to the present, the memorable reign of George III. may be more fitly entered upon.

CHAPTER XXII.

ACCESSION OF GEORGE III.

Relations of the Crown and Aristocracy. — Lord Bute's Scheme of Court Government. —Lord North's Ministry, and Disappointment of the Factions. - Junius, and recent Disclosures. — Constitutional Progress.— General Warrants, Publicity of Parliamentary Debates, and the Irresponsible Power acquired by the Press.― Edmund Burke, and the Position of Political Aspirants.

THE Revolution of 1688 had effected an entire change in one of the chief elements of the government. It had divested the crown of its feudal character and pretensions, and left it more nominal than real in its control over the other constituents of the state. In compassing this transition, its authors had evinced a respect for the rights of the people, in common with the interests of their own order, and were especially mindful of a final settlement of the disputed prerogatives which for a century had been in issue between the Commons and the sovereign. So much justice and forethought manifested a correct appreciation of the juncture in which they were placed, a disposition to profit by experience, and prudent regard to future contingencies. Higher merits than these it is not easy to conceive, and it is likely posterity will not begrudge them to the constructive statesmen of the Revolution.

Still the system they introduced was experimental. Both the men who invited the Prince of Orange to the vacant throne, and the prince himself, stood in untried relations. William III. was only the nominee of a

POSITION OF PARTIES FROM THE REVOLUTION.

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coterie until his regal position had been defined by the Convention Parliament; and after this settlement had been made, arose uncertainties as to the tenure of the executive power. Was the king to be free to choose his ministers, or was he to accept, from gratitude if not policy or constitutional right, for his servants those who had raised him to the throne? United by a common interest with William III., the revolution patriots were obviously the most eligible for his first ministers; and such they became. Unfortunately they soon quarrelled among themselves, either from misgiving as to the course they had pursued, personal jealousies, or dissatisfaction with their official appointments. Instead of being the king of a united people, William soon found himself only at the head of rival factions, with whose cooperation in any form of combination it was difficult to carry on the government. Whig ministers were tried and Tory ministers were tried, and next a mixture of the two were balanced against each other; but no variety of combination was able to effect a cordial union of a composite cabinet. The difficulties experienced in the formation of a stable administration descended to Queen Anne. But the great war King William had bequeathed to the queen, gave unchallenged ascendancy to the Marlboroughs till towards the close of her reign. On the death of Anne, the promptitude of the Whigs in securing the Protestant succession, and frustrating the intrigues of the Jacobites to effect a restoration of the Stuarts, established lasting claims of gratitude in the family of Hanover. Consequently the leading members of this party became almost uninterruptedly the ministers of the crown during the next two reigns.

From the German character and predilections of the first two Georges, they took little interest in English

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