George III and the Whig Historians

GEORGE III AND THE WHIG HISTORIANS EDGAR McINNIS I I T was the peculiar misfortune of George III that practically all his literate contemporaries were Whigs. No doubt it was a misfortune which he could bear with equanimity. Literacy has never been a serious factor in politics, and a little quiet patronage is a more potent argument than all the prose of Burke. But the recipients of patronage died mutely and ingloriously, leaving little memory to posterity. It was the vocal and indignant opponents of the court who held the king's historical reputation at their mercy, and who wrote into the annals of subsequent generations their unsparing condemnation of all his works. This was true, of course, not merely of the reign of George III, but of the eighteenth century as a whole. In more than one sense this was truly the century of the Whigs. With the death of Swift, the last great Tory pamphleteer disappeared from the scene. The efForts of Bolingbroke to carryon the struggle could make only temporary headway against the settled complacency of his opponents. The Toryism of Dr. Johnson, under the gloss of successive commentators, became merely the quaint trait of a lovable character for whom one makes allowances. With Walpole and Hervey at hand, Bolingbroke went unread; even Junius is less extinct to-day. For the Whigs were not merely the chief actors on the political scene-they were also the interpreters of their own acts for the benefit of posterity. It was an advantage such as few oligarchies have ever enjoyed so completely or used with such effectiveness. 454 GEORGE III AND THE WHIG HISTORIANS This effectiveness is all the more striking in the light of Whig conduct and policy in the days of their prosperity. "You have done good by stealth," wrote Junius to the Duke of Bedford. "The rest is upon record." The words mig-ht almost stano as the epitaph of the whole Whig oligarchy during the first half of the eighteenth century. It is true that the period of Walpole was of profound importance for the future of England; butit was not by conferring benefits upon the nation that Walpole maintained himself in power for twenty years. . His greatest wisdom in foreign affairs only made more furious the attacks upon his policy. His most far-sighted trade proposals nearly ended in civil war. But by a judicious use of public funds for the satisfaction of private avarice he held his followers in line, and was able to pursue, almost surreptitiously, a policy which eventually raised England to the undisputed mastery of the world's commerce. Nevertheless, it was his disservice to public life, rather than his fostering of national prosperity, that remained the chief elemen t in Walpole's reputation. This was partly because its results were so apparent in the twenty years after his fall. For this was the age of Newcastle, the age of corruption and incompetence, when Henry Fox amassed a fortune in public office and Admiral Byng was shot on his own quarterdeck. It took Pitt to give coherence and meaning to England's policy, and Pitt was hardly a Whig even in name. For the glory which he brought her, England paid heavily in the treasure which Walpole had helped her to accumulate; but even the extravagant splendour of Pitt was cheaper than the barren and humiJiating prodigality of Newcastle. All this has been freely admitted by the Whig apologists . In the absence of anyone to say a good word for the Tories, a cheerful confession of past errors could do little 455 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY harm to the Whigs. Indeed, a judicious amount of public penance strengthened their moral position when it came to a controversy over the system of George III. At bottom there was a conviction that, with all their faults, the Whigs were less abandoned than the Tories, and that the prosaic realism of Walpole was eminently preferable to the high-flown hypocrisy of Bolingbroke. Macaulay, with his robust dogmatism, summed it up in a sentence: "We are for the principles of good government against Walpole, and for Walpole against the opposition." It was in very...