No sovereign since Anne's death has appeared at a Cabinet Council, or has ventured to refuse his assent to an Act of Parliament. As Elector of Hanover indeed the king still dealt with Continental affairs: but his personal interference roused an increasing jealousy, while it affected in a very slight degree the foreign policy of his English counsellors. England, in short, was governed not by the king but by the Whig Ministers. But their power was doubled by the steady support of the very kings they displaced. The first two sovereigns of the House of Hanover believed they owed their throne to the Whigs, and looked on the support of the Whigs as the true basis of their monarchy. The new monarchs had no longer to dread the spectre of republicanism which had haunted the Stuarts and even Anne, whenever a Whig domination threatened her; for republicanism was dead. Nor was there the older anxiety as to the prerogative to sever the monarchy from the Whigs, for the bounds of the prerogative were now defined by law, and the Whigs were as zealous as any Tory could be in preserving what remained. From the accession of George the First therefore to the death of George the Second the whole influence of the Crown was thrown into the Whig scale; and if its direct power was gone, its indirect influence was still powerful. It was indeed the more powerful that the Revolution had put an end to the dread that its influence could be used in any struggle against liberty. "The generality of the world here," said the new Whig Chancellor, Lord Cowper, to King George, "is so much in love with the advantages a king of Great Britain has to bestow without the least exceeding the bounds of law, that 'tis wholly in your majesty's power, by showing your power in good time to one or other of them, to give which party you please a clear majority in all succeeding parliaments." [Sidenote: The Whigs and Parliament.]