By skillful partisan patronage,
by bestowal of state offices and pensions upon members of Parliament,
by open bribery, and by electioneering, he secured his ends and
maintained his majority in the House of Commons.
Walpole's successors,--Henry Pelham and the duke of Newcastle,--like
him represented the oligarchy of Whig nobles and millionaires, and even
outdid him in corrupt methods. Another section of the Whig party under
the leadership of William Pitt the elder (the earl of Chatham) won
great popularity by its condemnation of political "graft." Pitt's fiery
demands for war first against Spain (1739-1748) and then against France
(1756-1763) were echoed by patriotic squires and by the merchants who
wished to ruin French commerce and to throw off the restrictions laid
by Spain on American commerce. Pitt had his way until George III, a
monarch determined to destroy the power of the Whigs, appointed Tory
ministers, such as Lord Bute and Lord North. The attempt of George III
to regain the power his great-grandfather had lost, to rule as well as
to reign, was in the end a failure, and later Hanoverians might well
have joined George II in declaring that "ministers are kings in this
country.
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