ABSTRACT
All contemporary politicians agreed that such instability could have only one root cause, an unbalanced Constitution, though beyond this their agreement broke down. Although the King’s Ministers and the Opposition conceived of the operation of the Constitution in a similar, if not identical manner, they emphatic ally differed as to the nature of current constitutional change. On the one hand the Ministers argued that the pervasiveness of dissent was indicative of a growing ‘ anarchy * or constitutional imbalance produced by an undue preponderance of the democratical element in the Constitution. On the other, the opposition attributed the cries of the people to the existence of ‘ tyranny ’, an imbalance caused by the disproportionate acquisition of power by the Crown. But the opposition, of course, were not simply concerned to elucidate the cause of the present discontents; they also sought to explain their exclusion from the political offices which many of them had held for nearly a generation. It was inexplicable to them that in the normal course of political affairs the natural leaders of society (for so they regarded themselves) should be deprived of political influence. Only the creation of a constitutionally aberrant situation, the corruption of monarchy into tyranny, could account for their exclusion from power; and so, whether with naive or malicious intent, they deployed what has certainly become the most notorious eighteenth-century opposition argument, maintaining that George, the unwitting victim of Bute’s and/or the King’s Friends’ intrigues, had transformed his crusade for political reform into a vendetta, effected a Tory revival, recreated parties, employed secret influence and thereby suborned the Constitution.5
