Parliament was to continue for six months before dissolution, and everything for the present passed off quietly; the Civil List was voted as in the preceding reign; and on the 18th of September the King and his eldest son arrived in England. He was not a man to excite enthusiasm. An unostentatious man, used to a Court where his will was law, but where the manners were singularly primitive and plain, he was little suited to the peculiar position of an English Parliamentary sovereign, from whom, along with the possession of but little real power, much dignity and some magnificence were required. Unable therefore to comprehend the working of that constitution over which he had come to preside, and without ability sufficient to carry on a policy of his own, he naturally threw himself into the arms of that party to which he owed his Crown. The great offices, several of which had been for the last month united in the hands of Shrewsbury, were therefore distributed among the Whigs. Townshend was put at the head of the Government, and with him were Halifax, General Stanhope, Lord Cowper, Nottingham, and Lord Townshend's brother-in-law, Sir Robert Walpole; while Sunderland was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and the Duke of Marlborough (though the King had already shown his well-founded mistrust of him) reassumed the offices of Commander-in-chief and Master of the Ordnance. His power, however, was gone. [Sidenote: Triumph of the Whigs.] The establishment of the Hanoverian house had thus very much the appearance of a triumph of a faction. There were no attempts at conciliation, such as had been made after the Revolution, no efforts to give a general and national character to the Government. The King came forward as the head of the triumphant Whig party. This attitude naturally at the time excited much ill-feeling, yet on the whole it was wise. George was not the man to carry out a scheme of comprehensive government which had already twice failed in the abler hands of William and of Marlborough. The questions at issue were too vital to admit of compromise, and the Whig party were wise in their view of the crisis. A crushing victory was necessary to teach both their conscientious and factious opponents a lesson,--the one must yield to the force of circumstances, the other must discover that their only road to office lay in concession to principles which they were too weak to shake. Conscientious upholders of the Stuarts must be taught that their choice lay between submission and the resignation of their claim to be regarded as Englishmen; those who used the Stuarts as a road to power must be led to see that they must henceforward limit their opposition to points of minor importance, that the main principles of government were fixed for ever. [Sidenote: Riots in the country.]