very abuse was perpetrated
without either exposure or complaint. There were no Wilkeses nor Juniuses,
to lash the vices of administration, from 1688 to 1761, when the Whigs
were in power; though that was beyond all question the most corrupt period
of English history. But they appeared fast enough, and did infinite good,
as soon as the Tories got possession of the public treasury. This is the
true secret of the unbounded corruption of the government of the
Convention and Directory in France--of the rapid return to a corrupt
system during the ten years of Whig power which succeeded the downfall of
the Tories in 1830, and of the establishment of Louis Philippe's dynasty,
now, on the basis of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand offices, which
Tocqueville tells us are at the disposal of the ruling power at the
Tuileries. It is not that the popular leaders are worse men, or by nature
more inclined to evil, than their Conservative opponents, but that, when
they are elevated into power by the result of a revolution or social
convulsion, the controlling has become the ruling power; its leaders and
followers alike profit by corruption and mal-administration; and therefore
there is no longer any possible restraint on abuse. It is not that the
Conservative leaders are by nature better men, or more inclined to eschew
evil and do good than their popular opponents: but that, as the basis of
their government is property, which necessarily is vested in comparatively
few hands, they are of course opposed and narrowly watched by numbers; and
thus they are deterred from doing evil, from the dread of its consequences
recoiling upon themselves. And this observation explains the cause of the
remark by Montesquieu, which the experience of all ages has proved to be
well founded, "that the most degrading despotisms recorded in history have
been those which have immediately followed a successful revolution."

The clearest proof of how strongly, and all but indelibly, corruption and
abuses had become engrained, as it were, on the practice of the English
constitution, is to be found in their long continuance and pernicious
effects after the popular party had been thrown back to their proper duty
of watching and checking the abuses of government, and despite the
prodigious efforts which were made, and the vast talent which was exerted,
to expose and decry it. Walpole tells us enough of the corrupt means by
which Lord Bute's authority was maintained,