Growth of Cabinet Rule
William III. began with a mixed ministry of Whigs and Tories, which included men like Danby and Godolphin, who had served under James II. But the fierce wrangling that went on over the war then being waged on the Continent was decidedly inconvenient, and by 1696 the Whigs had succeeded in driving all the Tories—who were against the war—out of office. Then for the first time a united ministry was in power, and from a Cabinet of men with common political opinions the next step was to secure that the Cabinet should represent the party with a majority in the House of Commons. Our present system of Cabinet rule, dependent on the will of the majority of the Commons, is found in full operation by the middle of the eighteenth century. The fact that William III., George I., and George II. were all foreigners necessitated the King’s ministers using considerable powers. But George III. was English, and effected a revival in the personal power of the King by his determination that the choice of ministers should rest with the Crown, and not with the House of Commons. He succeeded in breaking up the long Whig ascendancy, and so accustomed became the people to the King making and unmaking ministries, that on George IV.’s accession in 1820 it was fully expected the new King would turn out the Tories and put in Whigs. William IV. in 1835 did what no sovereign has done since—dissolved Parliament against the wish of the government.
From 1696 to 1701 the Whigs were in office. Then on the death of William and the accession of Anne, Tory ministers were included in the government, and for seven years the Cabinet was composite again. But Marlborough and Godolphin found that if they were to remain in power it must be by the support of the Whigs, who had made the support of the war against France a party question; and from 1708 to 1710 the ministry was definitely Whig. By 1710 the war had ceased to be popular, and the general election of that year sent back a strong Tory majority to the House of Commons, with the result that the Tory leaders, Harley (Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John (Bolingbroke) took office. The Tories fell on the death of Anne, because their plot to place James (generally called the Chevalier or the old Pretender), the Queen’s half-brother, on the throne was defeated by the readiness of the Whig Dukes of Somerset and Argyll to proclaim George, Elector of Hanover, King of England. By the Act of Settlement, 1701, Parliament had decided that the Crown should pass from Anne to the heirs of Sophia, Electress of Hanover and daughter of James I.; and the fact that the Chevalier was a Catholic made his accession impossible according to law, and the policy of Bolingbroke highly treasonable.
George I. could not speak English, and relied entirely on his Whig ministers. Bolingbroke fled to the Continent, but was permitted to return from exile nine years later. Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower. The Whigs were left in triumph to rule the country for nearly fifty years—until the restiveness of George III. broke up their dominion—and for more than twenty years of that period Walpole was Prime Minister. Cabinet government—that is, government by a small body of men, agreed upon main questions of policy, and commanding the confidence of the majority of the House of Commons—was now in full swing, and in spite of the monarchist revival under George III., no King henceforth ever refused consent to a Bill passed by Parliament.
The Whigs did nothing in those first sixty years of the eighteenth century to make the House of Commons more representative of the people. They were content to repeat the old cries of the Revolution, and to oppose all proposals of change. But they governed England without oppression, and Walpole’s commercial and financial measures satisfied the trading classes and kept national credit sound.