d put an end to the dread that
its influence could be used in any struggle against liberty. "The
generality of the world here," said the new Whig Chancellor, Lord
Cowper, to King George, "is so much in love with the advantages a king
of Great Britain has to bestow without the least exceeding the bounds of
law, that 'tis wholly in your majesty's power, by showing your power in
good time to one or other of them, to give which party you please a
clear majority in all succeeding parliaments."

[Sidenote: The Whigs and Parliament.]

It was no wonder therefore that in the first of the new king's
parliaments an overwhelming majority appeared in support of the Whigs.
But the continuance of that majority for more than thirty years was not
wholly due to the unswerving support which the Crown gave its Ministers
or to the secession of the Tories. In some measure it was due to the
excellent organization of the Whig party. While their adversaries were
divided by differences of principle and without leaders of real
eminence, the Whigs stood as one man on the principles of the Revolution
and produced great leaders who carried them into effect. They submitted
with admirable discipline to the guidance of a knot of great nobles, to
the houses of Bentinck, Manners, Campbell, and Cavendish, to the
Fitzroys and Lennoxes, the Russells and Grenvilles, families whose
resistance to the Stuarts, whose share in the Revolution, whose energy
in setting the line of Hanover on the throne, gave them a claim to
power. It was due yet more largely to the activity with which the Whigs
devoted themselves to the gaining and preserving an ascendency in the
House of Commons. The support of the commercial classes and of the great
towns was secured not only by a resolute maintenance of public credit,
but by the special attention which each ministry paid to questions of
trade and finance. Peace and the reduction of the land-tax conciliated
the farmers and the landowners, while the Jacobite sympathies of the
bulk of the squires, and their consequent withdrawal from all share in
politics, threw even the representation of the shires for a time into
Whig hands. Of the county members, who formed the less numerous but the
weightier part of the lower House, nine-tenths were for some years
relatives and dependents of the great Whig families. Nor were coarser
means of controlling Parliament neglected. The wealth of the Whig houses
was lavishly spent in securing a monopol