without being subject to the Parliament. The English Parliament, according to this theory, would be primarily the legislature for England and Scotland; but on account of its central and imperial position it would also exercise a directing and supervising control of matters of purely imperial concern, such as international relations and general commercial regulations; but it would have no control whatever over the local legislative concerns of the Colonies any more than over the local concerns of Hanover. The famous Declaration of Independence was constructed on this theory. It does not mention Parliament; the charges of tyranny and oppression are all directed against the king, on the ground that the Colonies could declare their independence of the king only, since the king was the only authority to which they had ever been legally subject.

The battle of Yorktown made it clear to all, even to the stubborn king himself, that the attempt to subject the Colonies to parliamentary control must be abandoned. But in abandoning this object the king had also to forgo the attempt to establish royal supremacy over Parliament. In a very real sense the victory at Yorktown in 1781 not only established the independence of the United States, but contributed to the triumph

of the principle of parliamentary government in England as well.

From his accession, in 1760, to the end of the Revolution George III steadily labored to undermine the principle of the responsibility of Ministers to Parliament. His ideal of government was not far different from that of the rulers of modern Germany: it was the king's duty to rule his people, to rule them wisely and well in a paternal spirit; it was the duty of the people to submit dutifully to this paternal wisdom; as for the Parliament, that was a body of representative men whose business it was to give advice to their master so that he might indeed rule wisely, but never to force its advice upon him. George III would therefore have Ministers of his own choice who were entirely responsible to him and not to the Parliament; he would have Ministers who, because they were chosen by him from all parties, would be subject to no party and would be able, therefore, to give him disinterested advice. For twenty years the king worked steadily to realize this type of benevolent despotism in England.

It is not likely that the king could in any case have succeeded. Nevertheless, his object was not an impossible one. At that time the principle of ministerial responsibility to Parliament was by no means firmly established

in English political practice, and the conditions of English politics were so undemocratic and in many respects so corrupt that there was something to be said in favor of the king's contention. The English Parliament in the eighteenth century was a representative body, but it was not a democratic body. It really represented those great landowners and merchant princes who were able, through their wealth and social influence and by virtue of a peculiarly inequitable system of elections, to control in large measure the return of members to Parliament. The political leaders who looked out for the interests of these classes were divided into a number of groups or "factions." They all called themselves "Whigs" because the term "Tory" had fallen into disrepute since 1714, when Lord Bolingbroke and other Tories had opposed the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty and had intrigued to bring back instead the exiled Stuarts. From 1714 to 1760, therefore, the government of England fell into the hands of the Whigs; and at the time of the accession of George III, in 1760, the various Whig factions-the Bedford Whigs and Pelham Whigs and Grenville Whigs-had come to think of government as a kind of vested right to be enjoyed by them forever. And in particular they had come to think of the king's Ministers as men who

must be the responsible leaders of Parliament, as men who must adopt policies which could be carried through Parliament.

Now George III was not willing to submit to ministerial, that is to say, to parliamentary, control. George III was the first of the House of Hanover who could speak the English language as his native tongue, and he was the first to be more interested in his English possessions than in his Hanoverian possessions. "Born and bred an Englishman," he said, "I glory in the name of Briton." He not only gloried in the name of Briton, he gloried also in the name of king; and from the first day of his reign he was determined to be a real king, to formulate his own policies, and to destroy the controlling power of the great Whig families. It must be confessed that there is not much to be said for the Whig factions, or, with exceptions, for their leaders. Such men as the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Bedford, George Grenville, or Charles Townshend were more intent upon advancing their own political interests, or in circumventing the intrigues of a rival faction, than they were in advancing the interests of the nation or defending or promoting the cause of free government. The famous William Pitt, a great liberal and a friend of the right of the Colonies to tax themselves, was nevertheless

as hostile to the Whig factions as the king himself, and as willing to see them destroyed. But the king aimed to do more than to destroy the Whig factions; he aimed to make the king independent of Parliament to restore the powers and prerogatives which the kings had enjoyed before the Revolution of 1688. Thus it happened that in resisting the king, and in trying to force their Ministers upon him, the corrupt Whig factions, whatever the motive may have been which inspired their action, were really fighting for the principle of representative government against the principle of royal supremacy.

This conflict between the king and the Whig factions went on during the first twenty years of the new reign; and as time passed it became clear that the question of parliamentary as against royal control in the English government was bound up with the question of the success or failure of the Colonies in their struggle for self-government. The number of men who supported the Colonies was not great, although they were often men of the greatest ability, such as Pitt and Burke and Fox; and when the Colonies declared their independence many men in England who had formerly supported them now rallied to the support of the government's policy. Pitt himself was one of these; and in fact it was the revolt of