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resignation;’ then, conspiring against
Pitt and sub-
mitting to every thing; he remained at his post.
In the approaching election, he was thwarted in his desire to use for his own purposes his old system of corruption; but of whatever he complained, it was answered, ‘The king had ordered it so.’
To the king's boroughs the king himself would name.
Where a public order gave permission to the voters in the king's interest, to vote as they pleased, a private one was annexed, ‘naming the person for whom they were all to vote;’ and
Newcastle was limited to those where the crown had only an influence.
‘The new parliament,’ said
Bute, confidently, ‘will be the
king's.’
George the Third began his reign by competing with the aristocracy at the elections for the majority in that body; and in the choice of the twelfth parliament, his first effort was successful.
Changes in the cabinet were preparing.
From the opening of the new reign Holdernesse had been ready to quarrel with his fellow-ministers, and throw up in seeming anger, so that
Bute might then come in without appearing to displace any one.
But this was too foolish a scheme to be approved of. ‘It is very easy,’ thought the
Favorite, in February, ‘to make the
Duke of
Newcastle resign, but who is to take it?’
He had not courage to aim at once at the highest station.
On the nineteenth of March, 1761, as the session
closed, the eleventh parliament of Great Britain was dissolved.
On the same day, to gratify a grudge of George the Third, conceived when
Prince of
Wales,
Legge, the chancellor of the exchequer, was dismissed.
When it was known that that officer was to be turned out,
George Grenville, who piqued himself on his
