George III. was not a great man, and it has been argued that his mind was never really sound; and yet of all men who then lived, and far more than either Washington or Napoleon, he gave direction and color and tone to all public events, and to not a little of private life, and much of his work will have everlasting endurance.  He did not supersede the House of Commons, but he would not be the simple vizier of that many-headed sultan, which for the most part became his humble tool.  Yet he was not a popular sovereign until he had long occupied the throne, and had perpetrated deeds that should have destroyed the greatest popularity that sovereign ever possessed.  It was not until after the overthrow of the Fox-and-North Coalition that he found himself popular, and so he remained unto the end.  The change that he wrought, and the power that he wielded in the State,—­a power as arbitrary as that of Louis XV.,—­were the fruits of his personal character, and that character was the consequence of the peculiar education which he had received.

Lord Brougham tells us that George III. “was impressed with a lofty feeling of his prerogative, and a firm determination to maintain, perhaps extend it.  At all events, he was resolved not to be a mere name or a cipher in public affairs; and whether from a sense of the obligations imposed upon him by his station, or from a desire to enjoy all its powers and privileges, he certainly, while his reason remained entire, but especially during the earlier period of his reign, interfered in the affairs of government more than any prince who ever sat upon the throne of this country since our monarchy was distinctly admitted to be a limited one, and its executive functions were distributed among responsible ministers.  The correspondence which he carried on with his confidential servants during the ten most critical years of his life lies before us, and it proves that his attention was ever awake to all the occurrences of the government.  Not a step was taken in foreign, colonial, or domestic affairs, that he did not form his opinion upon it, and exercise his influence over it.  The instructions to ambassadors, the orders to governors, the movements of forces, down to the marching of a single battalion, in the districts of this country, the appointment to all offices in Church and State, not only the giving away of judgeships, bishoprics, regiments, but the subordinate promotions, lay and clerical,—­all these form the topics of his letters; on all his opinion is pronounced decisively; in all his will is declared peremptorily.  In one letter he decides the appointment of a Scotch puisne judge; in another the march of a troop from Buckinghamshire into Yorkshire; in a third the nomination to the Deanery of Westminster; in a fourth he says, that, ’if Adam, the architect, succeeds Worsley at the Board of Works, he shall think Chambers ill used.’  For the greater affairs of State it is well known how substantially he insisted upon being the king de facto as well as de jure.  The American War, the long exclusion of the Liberal party, the French Revolution, the Catholic question, are all sad monuments of his real power.”