Thus is closed the great constitutional struggle of the early part of the reign--the struggle of the King, supported by the unrepresented masses, and the more liberal and independent of those who were represented, against the domination of the House of Commons. It was an attempt to break those trammels which, under the guise of liberty, the upper classes, the great lords and landed aristocracy, had succeeded after the Revolution in laying on both Crown and people. In that struggle the King had been victorious. But he did not recognize the alliance which had enabled him to succeed. He did not understand that the people had other objects much beyond his own. He saw that they felt thus far with him, that they disliked the comparative servitude in which he was placed, that they felt hurt at the coercion frequently brought to bear upon him by the dominant faction, that they were willing and anxious to assist him in breaking those ties of party, which were little else than the ties of faction and class. Seeing this, he did not recognize that the people were equally disinclined for the establishment of personal government, that they wanted to strengthen the Crown and to weaken the Whig party, chiefly as a means of attaining to a more complete system of self-government. He believed that his own power and his own skill had been chiefly instrumental in the success which had met his efforts. He had no intention of allowing any of the fruits of that success to fall to any but himself. Kind-hearted and well-meaning, he wished to govern for the good of his people, but he distinctly wished to govern for them and not to let them govern for themselves. It is thus that during the ministry of North, and of those who preceded him, the royal influence was constantly employed in repression,--repression of all popular movements at home, repression of all attempts at liberty in the colonies; and this principle Lord North, backed by a servile House of Commons, was able to uphold. [Sidenote: Grenville's reform of election petitions. 1770.]