Perhaps the most important of the King’s actions at this time was his selection of seven great officers of state, to form the Cabinet Council of the Sovereign. It created a precedent which has lasted to this day, though now the Cabinet, swollen in numbers, has lost much of its former collective authority. Another and equally important precedent was set by George the First. At his first council, he frankly told his Ministers that he knew very little about the English Constitution, and he should therefore place himself entirely in their hands, and govern through them. “Then,” he added, “you will become completely answerable for everything I do.” In pursuance of this policy, and also because he could speak no English, the King determined not to preside over the meetings of his council, as all previous English monarchs had done, and from the beginning of his reign until now, Cabinet Councils have been held without the presence of the Sovereign. Of course the King retained some influence in the councils of the realm, especially with regard to foreign policy, but this power was exercised by George the First, largely by indirect methods, on which we shall presently have occasion to dwell. The King, however, showed himself by no means a man to be ignored; he was a shrewd if cynical judge of character, and though by no means clever, he avoided many pitfalls into which a more brilliant man might have fallen. He had always to be reckoned with. He kept the appointments in his own hands, and his care to exclude the great Whig Lords from his Government, in favour of younger men with less influence, showed that he was determined not to be dictated to. But his policy of forming his first Administration entirely of Whigs made him of necessity the King, not of the whole nation, but of a faction. George the First was not a great statesman, and his little knowledge of English affairs made it difficult for him to include in his first Government some of the more moderate among the Tories. Coalition Governments had failed under William the Third and Anne, and were hardly likely to succeed under George the First. But the total exclusion of the Tories from office undoubtedly had a bad effect upon the nation at large. There were many Tories who were loyal to the Hanoverian succession; there were others who were determined to uphold the monarchy and the Church, even though the monarch was a German prince with, to them, scarce a shadow of title to the throne. These men, who represented a large and influential class of the community, were now left without any voice in the councils of the nation. The immediate result was to drive many waverers over to Jacobitism, and to render others apathetic in upholding the new dynasty.