The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 Read Online Free PDF

the monarch; it was personal, not institutional, service, though of course it was in fact institutionalized in an elaborate and clumsy structure of government. At the top the king himself took an active part. He was
     
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Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan , ed. Michael Oakesbott ( Oxford, 1957), 73-74.
    the leader of the executive, those ministers who exercised the powers of the Crown. Within limits the king chose the ministers who served him -- the limits being essentially the willingness of the leaders of Parliament to combine with others to do the government's work, and their ability to command the support of the membership of the two houses. No combination -- nor individual -- could be forced on the king, and great leaders commonly did not refuse the monarch's request that they put together a ministry to do his bidding, provided, of course, that they could work with others acceptable to the king.
     
    The great source of leadership, and ultimately of power, in government was the House of Commons, a body of some 558 members. Eighty of these were sent from the counties, the universities sent four, and the remaining sat for the cities and boroughs. Why men wished to act in Commons reveals much about English politics. Few apparently came with great ideas about policy or even with the purpose of serving some organized social or economic interest. Rather, they came for power and status, or to serve some local purpose, or because their families expected them to.
     
    With most members animated by purposes so limited, and with the nation agreed that no fundamental issues existed, it is not surprising that politics usually came down to the question Charles Dickens puts in the mouth of Lord Boodlein Bleak House : "What are you going to do with Noodle?" Bewildered by the shifting alignments of the day and sorely put to find a place for every deserving man, Lord Boodle saw the awful choices facing the Crown in forming a new ministry should the present government be overthrown, choices which "would lie between Lord Goodle and Sir Thomas Doodle -- supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the Leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council: that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests, that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost and gone to pieces . . . because you can't provide for Noodle!" 11
     
    The Lord Boodles of the political order rightfully attributed great
     
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Bleak House , chapter 12.

    importance to the distribution of offices; the system after all depended upon providing for one's friends and followers. Boodle, of course, overestimated the size of the catastrophe that would overtake the nation should Noodle go unprovided for -- the country would not go to ruin, but the ministry might, and given the myopia endemic to this sort of politics, the temptation to regard the ministry as the nation is understandable.
     
    In fact, if parliamentary government only imperfectly represented the nation, it did manage to contain, if not always to express, the interests of landed society. No matter how severe the shuffling of ministers and governments, this capacity remained intact. William Pitt, one of the rare men of ideas who played the game, entered the government in 1757 and left it in 1761; Newcastle held various offices over a fortyyear period. His departure a year after Pitt's did not shake the system. The same men, or the same sorts of men, popped up, played their parts, passed off, and perhaps reappeared, but the government continued to do about the same kinds of things, as did the