his eloquence
to one of the ruling cliques, and the goal of his career was naturally
a peerage.

The weakness of this system of government by family connection lay in
its thorough dependence upon customs of patronage and perquisite. The
public offices were heavily burdened with lucrative sinecures, which
were used in the factional contests to buy support in Parliament, as
were also peerages, contracts, and money bribes. When George III
ascended the throne, in 1760, he found the most powerful Minister in
the Cabinet to be the Duke of Newcastle, whose sole qualification,
apart from his birth, was his pre-eminent ability to handle patronage
and purchase votes. That such a system did not ruin England was due to
the tenacity and personal courage of this aristocracy and to {13} its
use of parliamentary methods, whereby the orderly conduct of
legislation and taxation and the habit of public attack and defence of
government measures furnished political training for the whole ruling
class. Further, the absence of any sharp caste lines made it possible
for them to turn, in times of crisis, to such strong-fibred and
masterful commoners as Walpole and Pitt, each of whom, in his way,
saved the country from the incompetent hands of titled ministries.

This system, moreover, rested in 1763 on the aquiescence of practically
all Englishmen. It was accepted by middle and lower classes alike as
normal and admirable; and only a small body of radicals felt called
upon to criticize the exclusion of the mass of taxpayers from a share
in the government. Pitt, in Parliament, was ready to proclaim a
national will as something distinct from the voice of the
borough-owners, but he had few followers. Only in London and a few
counties did sundry advocates of parliamentary reform strive in the
years after 1763 to emphasize these views by organizing the freemen to
petition and to "instruct" their representatives in the Commons. Such
desires evoked nothing but contempt and antipathy in the great majority
of Englishmen. Especially when they became audible in the mouths of
rioters did they appear revolutionary and {14} obnoxious to the lovers
of peace, good order, and the undisturbed collection of rents and
taxes. Nothing but a genuine social revolution could bring such ideas
to victory and that, in 1763, lay very far in the future. For the time
conservatism reigned supreme.

In the thirteen colonies, on the other hand, the communities of