of the two Houses. The King was unflinching in his support, and was highly commending the courage of his minister. There was, however, a threatened rising of the English tax-payers against the bill. The Queen urged that troops should be called out to put down the mob, but Walpole replied, "I will not be the minister to enforce taxes at the expense of blood." And, while still enjoying the support of the two Houses and of the Crown, he determined to withdraw a measure which his judgment heartily approved, wholly out of deference to the English nation which was represented by neither Crown nor Parliament.

In this series of events the action of the Prime Minister well illustrates the supremacy of that inspired mediocrity of common sense and moderation which has so many times been the saving factor in the history of political crises. Here also may be seen another instance when the spirit of the Constitution finds a more adequate expression in the person of a single ruler than was found in the legally constituted institutions. These occurrences show likewise that, notwithstanding that the old English habit of resisting the government had been weakened by distracting religious conflicts and foreign wars, yet the spirit of resistance still survived. Events of later Events of later years illustrate its persistence and growth; for, stimulated no doubt by the successful example of their undismayed brethren over sea, the English of England have finally vindicated for themselves the constitutional principle that taxation and government shall be only by and through representatives of their own choice.

The "sleeping dog" respected by Walpole was the unrepresented English nation. No view of American history is more erroneous than the notion that the American colonists in the early years of the reign of George III. wanted to send representatives to the British Parliament. These Englishmen in America had founded their local

governments at a time when it was still the expectation of the English tax-payer to be called upon to make war upon the tax-collector; that is, when this was the constitutional method of avoiding extortion. They in the New World came into possession of governmental institutions in which the people were really represented, and they were pleased with the change. Even Cavaliers and Tories whose theories were utterly opposed to popular representation in England, developed, when they came to dwell in the colonies, a great fondness for the representative system. Especially was this true after they had experienced the rule of certain tyrannical governors, sent out by Charles II. and James II.

The religious question was never prominent in America. It was arbitrary taxation and not the fear of Popery which maddened the colonists to the point of rebellion in the time of the later Stuarts. After the Great Revolution in England the Whig statesmen who found it to their interests to respect the unrepresented English nation had wisdom enough to let the colonists alone. When the government of George III. passed the Stamp Act, in 1765, it aroused the "sleeping dog" in America. That is, there was aroused in America to an acute wakefulness that same spirit which the Tudors had been induced to respect in the ancestors of the colonists, the spirit which the Stuarts could not be brought to regard, but resisted to their own undoing; the spirit which at all times has furnished the moral and physical force determining the fortunes of the contending factions and parties in England.

It is now a commonplace, both in England and in America, that George III. was the real rebel against the English Constitution. If George III. was a rebel against the Constitution, then the House of Commons and the English courts were likewise in a state of rebellion against it. In the same sense, all of these high gov

ernmental agencies had been in a chronic state of rebellion against the English Constitution for several centuries. If the Englishmen who lived in America represented the real English Constitution in their resistance to the tax-collectors of George III., then the Englishmen who resisted the collectors of the taxes voted by the Parliaments of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. represented the real Constitution. The Tudor kings became real constitutional monarchs when they took matters into their own hands and ruled according to the wishes of the unrepresented masses. This of course is using language with utter confusion. Yet this confusion is fitted to shed light upon a most obscure subject in the development of the modern Constitution.

It is within the memory of men who still live that a policy has been adopted in the English government of extending the franchise to the great body of the tax-payers. Preceding and coincident with this movement there has grown up the sentiment that it is unconstitutional, and immoral to resist the officers of the government. The sentiment now prevails that if there is a grievance it should be corrected in an orderly way by the people's representatives. This view when once attained seems so natural and so self-evident that it is readily and erroneously accepted as the view that had always prevailed. It is not an easy matter for a man to repent, to form new habits, and then to forget entirely his former self. But if a nation repents and forms new habits, it is almost sure to lose the consciousness of its former self, almost sure to get the notion that its existing character belongs also to the earlier times.

The historian ought always to have perceived that until recent times it was just as much in accord with the moral sense of the English nation to resist certain acts of the regularly constituted government as it is now to obey

these acts. If this change in the moral sense of Englishmen could have come to the people without being accompanied with actual popular representation in the government, nothing at all resembling what we now know as the English Constitution could ever have existed. So long as the people were not represented, the duty of resisting regularly constituted government was kept active. The American experience furnishes a good illustration of this. It would have been as absurd for the American colonists to desire or accept representation in the English House of Commons, as it was then constituted, as to have trusted their fortunes to the will of the King. The only representation which the Americans prized was that which they had long enjoyed in their own local governments and colonial assemblies. The intelligent colonists knew that the only recourse for the aggrieved English tax-payer was to make war upon the government.

The only way for an Englishman of that date to give his consent to a measure of taxation was by refraining from taking up arms against the tax-collector. The sense of the moral obligation to unite in a common resistance to acts of government was kept alive from generation to generation largely because of the fact that the governing classes were always contending among themselves and were constantly currying favour with the people. In the olden time, barons, clergy, and kings contended, and the nation favoured one or another as occasion served. The Tudors favoured the nation as against the governing classes. The Stuarts destroyed the personal supremacy of the monarch in a contest with Parliament. When the Great Revolution was accomplished, and the Crown appeared to be placed in permanent subjection to the two Houses, two political parties were formed to keep up the division of the governing classes, and these two parties contended for supremacy until the nation was enfranchised.

CHAPTER XXXIX

GOVERNMENT BY A DIVIDED CABINET, OR BY ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENTS

THE

HE great constitutional feature of the period of the first two Georges is found in the fact that the chief ministers formed the habit of planning the policy of the government in secret meetings, apart from the King, and then, through the Prime Minister, securing the approval of the Monarch to the policy agreed upon. In this way some of the essential features of the modern Cabinet system were developed. During the reigns of the last two Georges the Cabinet system, so far as it had been developed, was thoroughly tested. It was characteristic of the early Georges not to be greatly absorbed in English politics. This gave opportunity for the secret Cabinet to become institutional. When George II. did try to keep Pitt out of the Cabinet, the ministers resigned and forced him to submit. Later, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, a popular demand forced the King and the party leaders to admit Pitt to the first place in the Ministry. A characteristic of the later Georges was an absorbing interest in English politics. They at all times exerted a profound influence upon their Ministers and their Parliaments, and during a part of the time the rule of the King was almost absolute.

It is said that Bolingbroke and other Tory leaders had a hand in directing the education of George III. It is easy