rvived her) the throne went to
George I of the House of Hanover, the son of Sophie, grand-daughter of
James I.

This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word of English,
was entirely lost in the complicated mazes of England's political
arrangements. He left everything to his Cabinet Council and kept away
from their meetings, which bored him as he did not understand a single
sentence. In this way the Cabinet got into the habit of ruling England
and Scotland (whose Parliament had been joined to that of England in
1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend a great deal of
his time on the continent.

During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of great Whigs
(of whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for twenty-one years)
formed the Cabinet Council of the King. Their leader was finally
recognised as the official leader not only of the actual Cabinet but
also of the majority party in power in Parliament. The attempts of
George III to take matters into his own hands and not to leave the
actual business of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous that
they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the eighteenth
century on, England enjoyed representative government, with a
responsible ministry which conducted the affairs of the land.

To be quite true, this government did not represent all classes of
society. Less than one man in a dozen had the right to vote. But it was
the foundation for the modern representative form of government. In
a quiet and orderly fashion it took the power away from the King
and placed it in the hands of an ever increasing number of popular
representatives. It did not bring the millenium to England, but it saved
that country from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved so
disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE "DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS" CONTINUED WITH
GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE
RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE "BALANCE OF
POWER"

As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what happened in
France during the years when the English people were fighting for their
liberty. The happy combination of the right man in the right country at
the right moment is very rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of
this ideal, as far as France was concerned, but the rest