: George and the Parliament.]

We have already seen how mighty a change in the aspect of the world, and
above all in the aspect of Britain, was marked by this momentous treaty.
But no sense of its great issues influenced the young king in pressing
for its conclusion. His eye was fixed not so much on Europe or the
British Empire as on the petty game of politics which he was playing
with the Whigs. The anxiety which he showed for peace abroad sprang
mainly from his belief that peace was needful for success in his
struggle for power at home. So long as the war lasted Pitt's return to
office and the union of the Whigs under his guidance was an hourly
danger. But with peace the king's hands were free. He could count on the
dissensions of the Whigs, on the new-born loyalty of the Tories, on the
influence of the Crown patronage which he had taken into his own hands.
But what he counted on most of all was the character of the House of
Commons. So long as matters went quietly, so long as no gust of popular
passion or enthusiasm forced its members to bow for a while to outer
opinion, he saw that "management" could make the House a mere organ of
his will. George had discovered--to use Lord Bute's words--"that the
forms of a free and the ends of an arbitrary government were things not
altogether incompatible." At a time when it had become all-powerful in
the State, the House of Commons had ceased in any real and effective
sense to be a representative body at all; and its isolation from the
general opinion of the country left it at ordinary moments amenable only
to selfish influences. The Whigs had managed it by bribery and
borough-jobbing, and George in his turn seized bribery and
borough-jobbing as a base of the power he proposed to give to the
Crown. The royal revenue was employed to buy seats and to buy votes.
Day by day the young sovereign scrutinized the voting-list of the two
Houses, and distributed rewards and punishments as members voted
according to his will or no. Promotion in the civil service, preferment
in the Church, rank in the army, were reserved for "the king's friends."
Pensions and court places were used to influence debates. Bribery was
employed on a scale never known before. Under Bute's ministry an office
was opened at the Treasury for the purchase of members, and twenty-five
thousand pounds are said to have been spent in a single day.

[Sidenote: George III. and America.]

The result of these measures was s