An ignorant man at the head of a government, however honest he may be, is liable to make fatal mistakes in the selection of his ministers. He naturally dreads the close inspection of minds superior to his own. He has always to be on his good behavior before them, which is irksome. He shares the stock prejudices of mankind, one of which is a distrust of practiced politicians. But as the poorest company of actors will get through a comedy with less discredit than the best amateurs, so an administration of "party hacks" will usually carry on a government with less odious failure than an administration composed of better men without experience in public business. George III. had, moreover, a singularly unfortunate trait for a king who had to govern by party leaders--his prejudices against individuals were inveterate. Lord Waldegrave remarked "a kind of unhappiness in his temper" while he was still a youth. "Whenever he is displeased, his anger does not break out with heat and violence, but he becomes sullen and silent, and retires to his closet, not to compose his mind by study and contemplation, but merely to indulge the melancholy enjoyment of his own ill-humor." And when he re-appeared, it was but too evident that he had not forgotten the offense. He never forgot, he seldom forgave. "The same strength of memory," as Earl Russell once wrote of him, "and the same _brooding sullenness_ against those who opposed his will, which had been observed in the boy, were manifest in the man." [Illustration: The Mask (Coalition).] This peculiarity of character always prevented the formation of a proper ministry, and shortened the duration of every ministry which was approximately proper. During the first ten years of his reign his dislike of William Pitt, the natural chief of the Whig party, confused every arrangement; and during the next twenty years the most cherished object of his policy seemed to be to keep from power the natural successor of that minister--Charles James Fox. The ascendency of both those leaders was such that to exclude them from power was to paralyze their own party, and prevent the free play of politics in the House of Commons. It reduced the poor king at last to pit against Napoleon Bonaparte a young rhetorician of defective health, William Pitt, the son of the great minister. [Illustration: Heads of Fox and North. "In a committee on the sense of the nation, Moved, that for preventing future disorders and dissensions, the _heads_ of the Mutiny Act be brought in, and suffered to lie on the table to-morrow."--_Fox's Motion in Parliament, February, 1784._]