ABSTRACT
T h o u g h the metaphor must not be pushed too far there is some justification for regarding the American War of Independence as the watershed that divides eighteenth-from nineteenth-century England. Certainly after Saratoga Anglo-Irish relations began to take another direction and even more after Yorktown the slogan ‘measures not men’ began to assume some political reality. The year 1772 can well be considered as seeing the final flowering of the eighteenth-century constitution. George III was, as he intended to be, the head of his own ministers, choosing them yet acting with and through them in conjunction with a loyal and co-operative Parlia ment. Through Lord North his relations with the Commons were easy; corruption and influence alone will not explain the harmony between them and the King. The opposition groups, weak and divided, were as voices crying in the wilderness and events seemed unlikely to make straight their path before them. In 1772 there was very little indication of the humiliations to come. Yet by 1782 a revolt of the independent members of the Commons had forced North to resign and George III, much against his will, to appoint Rockingham as First Lord of the Treasury in his place.1
