Chapter 2 No.2

The new sovereign was a selfish, coarse old man, who in private life would, as Lady Montagu said, have passed for an honest blockhead. He neither knew anything about England, nor did he desire to know anything of it. He could not speak a word of the language of the country he was called to govern, and he made no attempt to learn it; even the coronation service had to be explained to him as best it might, in such broken Latin as the ministers could muster.

Laboring under these disadvantages he wisely declined to take any active part in the affairs of the nation. He trusted everything to his Whig friends (S532) and let them, with Sir Robert Walpole at their head, manage the country in their own way.

Forunately, the great body of the English people were abundantly able to take care of themselves. A noted French writer said of them that they resembled a barrel of their own beer, froth at the top, dregs at the bottom, but thoroughly sound and wholesome in the middle. It was this middle class, with their solid practical good sense, that kept the nation right.

They were by no means enthusiastic worshipers of the German King who had come to reign over them, but they saw that he had three good qualities: he was no hypocrite, he did not waste the people's money, and he was a man of unquestioned courage. But they also saw more than this, for they realized that though George I might be as heavy, dull, and wooden as the figurehead of an old-fashioned ship, yet, like that figurehead, he stood for something greater and better than himself,- for he represented Protestantism, with civil and religious liberty,- and so the people gave him their allegiance.