were saved from the fate of Richard Cromwell by the strenuous and able exertions of the Whig party, and by the general conviction that the nation had no choice but between the House of Brunswick and popery.  But by no class were the Guelphs regarded with that devoted affection, of which Charles the First, Charles the Second, and James the Second, in spite of the greatest faults, and in the midst of the greatest misfortunes, received innumerable proofs.  Those Whigs who stood by the new dynasty so manfully with purse and sword did so on principles independent of, and indeed almost incompatible with, the sentiment of devoted loyalty.  The moderate Tories regarded the foreign dynasty as a great evil, which must be endured for fear of a greater evil.  In the eyes of the high Tories, the Elector was the most hateful of robbers and tyrants.  The crown of another was on his head; the blood of the brave and loyal was on his hands.  Thus, during many years, the Kings of England were objects of strong personal aversion to many of their subjects; and of strong personal attachment to none.  They found, indeed, firm and cordial support against the pretender to their throne; but this support was given, not at all for their sake, but for the sake of a religious and political system which would have been endangered by their fall.  This support, too, they were compelled to purchase by perpetually sacrificing their private inclinations to the party which had set them on the throne, and which maintained them there.

At the close of the reign of George the Second, the feeling of aversion with which the House of Brunswick had long been regarded by half the nation had died away; but no feeling of affection to that house had yet sprung up.  There was little, indeed, in the old King’s character to inspire esteem or tenderness.  He was not our countryman.  He never set foot on our soil till he was more than thirty years old.  His speech betrayed his foreign origin and breeding.  His love for his native land, though the most amiable part of his character, was not likely to endear him to his British subjects.  He was never so happy as when he could exchange St. James’s for Hernhausen.  Year after year, our fleets were employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the interests of his kingdom were as nothing to him when compared with the interests of his Electorate.  As to the rest, he had neither the qualities which make dulness respectable, nor the qualities which make libertinism attractive.  He had been a bad son and a worse father, an unfaithful husband and an ungraceful lover.  Not one magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him; but many instances of meanness, and of a harshness which, but for the strong constitutional restraints under which he was placed, might have made the misery of his people.