352 Chapter 19
in France (served 1726–43), laid the bases of modern
ministerial government. The final stage of this evolu-
tion is known as ministerial responsibility, when the
prime minister and the cabinet no longer served at the
king’s pleasure but were responsible to parliament and
held office only as long as a majority supported them.
Signs of ministerial responsibility were evident in
eighteenth-century Britain, but the idea developed in
the nineteenth century and was not widely accepted
until the twentieth century.
Many ministers were selected by royal whim. The
most powerful adviser might be the king’s private secre-
tary, as was Alexandrea de Gusmao, the strongest
statesman in midcentury Portugal. Or power might be
hidden behind a minor office. For example, the title of
Adam Moltke, who dominated the government of
Denmark for a generation, was master of the royal
household. The two most influential advisers to
King Louis XV of France were the man who had been
his childhood tutor and one of the king’s mistresses.
The Rise of Parliamentary Government
in Hanoverian England
The strength of parliamentary government in England
was the result of seventeenth-century revolutions that
limited the royal power of the Stuart kings. When it
became clear that the royal line was dying out, Parlia-
ment asserted its supremacy and selected a German
princess from the House of Hanover (a relative of the
Stuarts) as the heir to the throne. Thus, in 1714 the
throne of England passed to a German, the elector of
Hanover. He took the title of King George I, beginning
the House of Hanover. His heirs took the names
George II and George III, so eighteenth-century En-
gland is known as Georgian England as well as
Hanoverian England.
King George I did not speak English, and he never
bothered to learn the language of his new kingdom, al-
though he had already learned Latin, French, and Ital-
ian. He preferred life in Germany and made long trips
to Hanover, where he kept a series of plump mistresses
whom the English press loved to satirize. The king
married his own cousin, then accused her of adultery,
divorced her, and imprisoned her for thirty years. This
monarch did not win the affection of the English peo-
ple who generally considered him indolent and igno-
rant. One of the sharpest tongued Englishmen, Samuel
Johnson, summarized him simply: “George I knew
nothing and desired to know nothing; did nothing and
desired to do nothing.”
The character of King George I contributed to the
supremacy of Parliament. He showed little interest in
government, and because of the language barrier, even
his addresses to Parliament had to be read by someone
else. Parliament asserted itself with a coronation oath,
requiring each monarch to swear to obey parliamentary
statutes. It established a mandatory term of office for it-
self and gained tighter control over the budget and the
army. But the most important effect of George I’s disin-
terest in governing was that it allowed the development
of the cabinet system of government.
George I’s adviser Sir Robert Walpole became the
first prime minister in British history and the architect
of the cabinet system. Walpole did not come from the
titled nobility but was the son of large landowners with
nearly a dozen manors. His marriage to a merchant’s
daughter brought him a dowry of £20,000 and the in-
dependence for a parliamentary career. He championed
the Hanoverian succession and won the confidence of
the royal family, who allowed him independence to
shape the government. Walpole also had to win the
confidence of parliament and he did so through re-
markable managerial skills. He won the backing of the
gentry by cutting the land tax from 20 percent to 5 per-
cent. He gained the faith of others by restoring order
to British finances after a crisis that was caused by stock
speculation known as the South Seas Bubble. He got
the support of manufacturing interests with a policy fa-
vorable to foreign trade. The key to Walpole’s success,
however, was probably his patronage system in which
he tried to find a job or an income for everyone who
would support him. “There is enough pasture for all the
sheep,” Walpole said. His opponents thought this scan-
dalous. Jonathan Swift put it bluntly: “The whole sys-
tem of his ministry was corruption; and he never gave
bribe or pension without frankly telling the receivers
what he expected from them.” But in this way, Sir
Robert Walpole held power for twenty-one years
and laid the foundations of modern parliamentary
government.
The British Parliament of the eighteenth century
(see illustration 19.1) was far from a modern, demo-
cratic legislature. The upper house, the House of Lords,
remained a bastion of the aristocracy where member-
ship was inherited by the eldest son along with the
family title. The lower house, the House of Commons,
was elective, but voting was limited to adult males who
paid forty shillings a year in property taxes, on the the-
ory that men of property had a vested interest in or-