insolvent debtor
when he needed money to sap the morals of his people. A movement in
the direction of purity began even in George III.'s own lifetime; he
was obliged to be cautious, and he ended by coming under the iron
domination of William Pitt. Thus, instead of being remembered as the
dangerous, obstinate, purblind man who made Parliament a sink of
foulness, and who lost America, he is mentioned as a comfortable
simple gentleman of the farmer sort. Before we can half understand the
vast purification that has been wrought, we must study the history of
the reign from 1765 to 1784, and then we may feel happy as we compare
our gentle, beneficent Sovereign with the unscrupulous blunderer who
fought the Colonists and all but lost the Empire.

Then consider the Ministers who carried out the Sovereign's behest.
There was "Jemmy Twitcher," as Lord Sandwich was called. This man was
so utterly bad, that in later life he never cared to conceal his
infamies, because he knew that his character could not possibly be
worse blackened. Sandwich belonged to the unspeakable Medmenham Abbey
set. The lovely ruin had been bought and renovated by a gang of rakes,
who converted it into an abode of drunkenness and grossness; they
defaced the sacred trees and the grey walls with inscriptions which
the indignation of a purer age has caused to be removed; they carried
on nightly revels which no historian could describe, and in their
wicked buffoonery mocked the Creator with burlesque religious rites.
Such an unholy place would be pulled down by the mob nowadays, and the
gang of debauchees would figure in the police-court; but in those
"good old times" the Prime Minister and the Secretary to the Admiralty
were merry members of a crew that disgraced humanity. Just six weeks
after Lord Sandwich had joined the Medmenham Abbey gang, he put
himself forward for election to the High Stewardship of Cambridge
University. Here was a pretty position! The man had been thus
described by a poet--

"Too infamous to have a friend,
Too bad for bad men to commend
Or good to name; beneath whose weight
Earth groans; who hath been spared by fate
Only to show on mercy's plan
How far and long God bears with man"--

and this superb piece of truculence was received with applause by all
that was upright and noble in England. This indescribable villain
presented himself as worthy to preside over the place where the flower
of English youth were educated.