Letters on The Spirit of Patriotism and on The Idea
of a Patriot King. By Viscount Bolingbroke. With an Introduction by A. Hassell. (Clarendon Press. 2a. 6d. net.)—Bolingbroke's famous pamphlet, on which George III. was nurtured, deserved a new edition. The author, who at the age of thirtyeis had become chief Minister, and after a brief term of supreme power fled into exile before the triumphant George of Hanover and his Whigs, spent the remaining half of his life in political inteigue and in study but his Patriot King is the only one of his writings of which most people have heard. Writing in 1739, when the King was avowedly a Whig and disliked by half his subjects, Bolingbrolce might properly
say that he "desired life for nothing so much as to see a King of Great Britain the most popular man in his country and a Patriot King at the head rif an united people." If his pamphlet is read in the light of the conditions that then prevailed, it need not be interpreted as a plea for absolute monarchy, which a Tory of 1738 could scarcely desire. Mr. Hassall's introductory essay corrects the traditional text-book view on this point.
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