ABSTRACT
Montesquieu contrasted the balanced constitution which he believed Britain enjoyed, and which protected the liberties of the subject, with the absolutist regimes of France and other major powers, in which all power vested ultimately in the monarch and his narrow coterie of advisers. George I left direction of government largely to his ministers, as, to a lesser extent, did George II. George III was much less interested in Hanover, whose government he left to viceroys, keen to stamp his influence on British affairs and restore the pre-eminence of the monarch over his ministers. The Treaty of Paris, concluding the war, proved of enormous importance in the genesis of the British Empire. Britain gained Canada and Louisiana from France, and Florida from Spain, so obtaining the whole of the North American mainland east of the Mississippi, together with the Caribbean islands of Grenada, St Vincent, Dominica and Tobago.
