Farmer George

INTRODUCTION THIS work is an attempt to portray the character of George I11 and to present him alike in his private life and in his Court. It is, therefore, not essential to the scheme of this book to treat of the political history of the reign, but it is impossible entirely to ignore it, since the King was so frequently instrumental in moulding it. l Only those events in which he took a leading part have been introduced, and consequently these volumes contain no account of Irish and Indian affairs, in which, apart from the Catholic Emancipation and East India Bills, the King did not actively interest himself. This difficulty was not met with by the author l So closely is the domestic history of George the Third connected with the political events of his reign, as to render it almost impossible to disassociate the one from the other. Fortunately, however, in the war of party and in the animated struggle for ascendency which he so long carried on with the great Whig aristocracy, there is ample and stirring interest. - J. H. Jesse. when writing a book on the life and times of George W, because that Prince had little to do with politics. It is true that he threw his influence into the scale of the Opposition as soon as, or even before, he came of age, but this was iar strictly personal reasons. Fox and Sheridan were the intimates of the later years of his minority, and his association with them gave him the pleasure of angering his father it was his protest against George for refusing him the income to which he considered himself, as Prince of Wales, entitled. He had, however, no interest in politics, as such, either before or after he ascended the throne and, indeed, as King, the onlymeasure that interested him was the Bill for the emancipation of the Catholics, which he opposed because resistance to it had made his father and his brother Frederick popular. with George the case was very different. He came to the throne in his twenty-third year, with his mothers advice, Be King, George, ringing in his ears, and, fully determined to carry out this instruction to the best of his ability, he was not content to reign without making strenuous efforts to rule. Farmer George, the nickname that has clung to him ever since it was bestowed satirically in the early days of his reign, has come, 1 The First GmUcman of Europe. z vols. 1906. except by those well versed in the history of the times, to be accepted as a tribute to his simple rnindedness and his homely mode of living. To these it will come as a shock to learn that Farmer George was a politician of duplicity so amazing that, were he other than a sovereign, it might well be written down as unscrupulousness. Loyalty, indeed, seems to have been foreign to his nature he was a born schemer. When the Duke of Newcastle was in power, George plotted for the removal of Pitt, knowing that the resignation of the Great Commoner must eventually bring about the retirement of the Duke, and so leave Bute in possession of supreme authority...