ABSTRACT
W h e t h e r George III is to be regarded in the traditional whig view as an eighteenth-century Machiavelli, skilfully playing on the weaknesses of his antagonists, or as a well-intentioned but in experienced young man floundering among circumstances too difficult for him, the dominating impression of the first ten years of his reign remains one of unstable administrations and shifting political groups. This appearance of mere political intrigue is deceptive; the decade is of fundamental importance. One strand in the pattern of events then woven was the clash of personalities and personal ambitions: Newcastle’s pathetic clinging to the hope of office, Pitt’s neurotic megalomania, Rockingham’s insistence on aristocratic influence, Burke’s spinning of constitutional theories, the obstinate determination of the King to do his royal duty as he saw it. The second thread came from the changing economic circumstances-of the post-war period. The East India Company was assuming new territorial responsibilities, for which neither its past history nor its existing machinery of government fitted it. In America growing wealth and growing nationalism were com bining to pose new problems in imperial relations. At home new wealth, created by expanding trade, by better agriculture, by more efficient industry, was creating new classes, less and less content with traditional political arrangements. In this decade new standards of responsibility for the government of India, which culminated in
the India Act of 1784, new forces mobilized against the Old Colonial System, which contributed to the recognition of American inde pendence in 1783, and a new radicalism in politics, associated halfaccidentally with the cry of ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ were all taking shape.
