ment
which created those privileges expressly declared them to be terminable,
what right had he to blame the Parliament, which was bound to do the
best for the State, for not saving him, at the expense of the State,
from the natural punishment of his own folly? It was evident that
nothing was proposed inconsistent with strict justice. And what right
had the Old Company to more than strict justice? These petitioners
who implored the legislature to deal indulgently with them in their
adversity, how had they used their boundless prosperity? Had not the
India House recently been the very den of corruption, the tainted spot
from which the plague had spread to the Court and the Council, to the
House of Commons and the House of Lords? Were the disclosures of 1695
forgotten, the eighty thousand pounds of secret service money disbursed
in one year, the enormous bribes direct and indirect, Seymour's
saltpetre contracts, Leeds's bags of golds? By the malpractices which
the inquiry in the Exchequer Chamber then brought to light, the Charter
had been forfeited; and it would have been well if the forfeiture had
been immediately enforced. "Had not time then pressed," said Montague,
"had it not been necessary that the session should close, it is probable
that the petitioners, who now cry out that they cannot get justice,
would have got more justice than they desired. If they had been called
to account for great and real wrong in 1695, we should not have had them
here complaining of imaginary wrong in 1698."

The fight was protracted by the obstinacy and dexterity of the Old
Company and its friends from the first week of May to the last week in
June. It seems that many even of Montague's followers doubted whether
the promised two millions would be forthcoming. His enemies confidently
predicted that the General Society would be as complete a failure as the
Land Bank had been in the year before the last, and that he would in the
autumn find himself in charge of an empty exchequer. His activity and
eloquence, however, prevailed. On the twenty-sixth of June, after many
laborious sittings, the question was put that this Bill do pass, and was
carried by one hundred and fifteen votes to seventy-eight. In the upper
House, the conflict was short and sharp. Some peers declared that, in
their opinion, the subscription to the proposed loan, far from amounting
to the two millions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected,
would fall far short o