presented by the character of the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover. The Elector of Hanover persisted in the exercise of his right to treat with foreign Powers regarding Hanover as Elector merely, without having to submit to the galling restraints imposed upon the British sovereign in the conduct of the foreign policy of Britain.[1] The confusion of issues that followed was hardly avoidable. But it was the manner of conducting the policy of Hanover that almost equally with the substance of that policy led to opposition and to outspoken resentment in Parliament.[2] It was the means adopted as well as the ends pursued that inspired the critics of the Hanover policy. The true inwardness of that policy, and the way in which it could be related to the furtherance of the interests of Britain, were grasped, in varying degrees and in changing situations, by Stanhope, by Carteret and, after his years of waywardness and irresponsibility, by the elder Pitt; and they did not vastly differ in the view they took of the use that was to be made of the rights of the executive in carrying out the policy. It was necessary to reckon with Parliament, and with a Parliament that was moved by home politics more than by foreign, except at a national crisis, and that was influenced by great family connexions and by the barter of patronage for power. For this Carteret, unlike Walpole and the Pelhams, was too proud, too brilliantly independent, to make the due allowance that discretion demanded; and he fell before those who were his inferiors in knowledge and capacity. It was necessary for ministers to win over Parliament, to manage it and even coerce it. It was expedient, under the imperious conditions of the parliamentary
- ↑ See Ward (A. W.), Great Britain and Hanover: some Aspects of the Personal Union (1899).
- ↑ For a concise statement see the Lords' Protests, February 17, 1725; cf. Protest of April 17, 1730.
