ourselves against losing all sense of perspective when we are concentrating attention on the bearing of one political system on the conduct of foreign policy.
William III was his own Foreign and War Minister. That was the condition of his action.[1] It is also, in large part, the explanation of his success. He would not be a mere Doge of Venice. No more bitter anxiety of mind fell on Marlborough in the conduct of war than that which came to him from uncertainty of the course of party politics at home; and it was the most continuously depressing of all his anxieties. With the accession of George I the constitution became still more parliamentary and still more dependent upon party and a party ministry. But, with the bearings of a parliamentary constitution better understood through an accumulating and diversified experience, criticism of its working and effects becomes more direct; misgivings assert themselves. Yet, the ministerial changes and uncertainties of the reigns of George I and George II were changes and uncertainties within one party, and were not primarily due to the criticisms and the policy of the Tories. Within a year of the accession of the new House we find the French Government instructing its representatives abroad to observe that one of the grounds for the failure of Stanhope's mission to the Emperor was the Emperor's recognition that little reliance could be placed on a Government subject to changes so frequent[2] as there had lately been in Britain. An additional element of uncertainty was
- ↑ See Miss H. C. Foxcroft, Life and Letters of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1898), ii. 137, for William's plea of urgency of supplies and for unity, in the King's Speech, October 1690, and Halifax's inquiry, in his Notes for a Speech, 'Of what use are Parliaments if, when there is war, everything that is asked is to be given?'
- ↑ 'Connoissant le peu de solidité des mesures qu'il prendroit avec un gouvernement sujet à des changements si fréquents.'—Instruction, 17 mars 1715, à M. Mandat, allant à Vienne: Instructions …: Autriche, pp. 186–7.
