The House of Commons, as the event proved, could be as subservient to the king as to his minister.
Yet the design failed; and it failed because, with characteristic stupidity, the king did not know the proper instruments for his purpose.

Whatever he touched he mismanaged.

He aroused the suspicion of the people by enforcing the resignation of the elder Pitt.

In the Wilkes affair he threw the clearest light of the century upon the true nature of the House of Commons.

His own system of proscription restored to the Whig party not a little of the idealism it had lost; and Burke came to supply them with a philosophy.