everal proportions should be
specified in a particular convention. But if any such convention were
made, it was never ratified; only the parties agreed, by common consent,
to take each a certain share of the burthen upon themselves, which the
late King William communicated to the House of Commons by his secretary
of state; and which afterwards the other two powers, observing the
mighty zeal in our ministry for prolonging the war, eluded as they
pleased.

The commissioners for stating the public accounts of the kingdom, had,
in executing their office the preceding summer, discovered several
practices relating to the affairs of the army, which they drew up in a
report, and delivered to the House.

The Commons began their examination of the report with a member of their
own, Mr. Robert Walpole, already mentioned; who, during his being
secretary at war, had received five hundred guineas, and taken a note
for five hundred pounds more, on account of two contracts for forage of
the queen's troops quartered in Scotland. He endeavoured to excuse the
first contract; but had nothing to say about the second. The first
appeared so plain and so scandalous to the Commons, that they voted the
author of it guilty of a high breach of trust, and notorious corruption,
committed him prisoner to the Tower, where he continued to the end of
the session, and expelled him the House.[1] He was a person much
caressed by the opposers of the Queen and ministry, having been first
drawn into their party by his indifference to any principles, and
afterwards kept steady by the loss of his place. His bold, forward
countenance, altogether a stranger to that infirmity which makes men
bashful, joined to a readiness of speaking in public, hath justly
entitled him, among those of his faction, to be a sort of leader of the
second form. The reader must excuse me for being so particular about
one, who is otherwise altogether obscure.[2]

[Footnote 1: See "Part Hist," vi. 1071. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: Walpole was not too obscure, however, to be then the object
of Bolingbroke's attack; and in 1726, when Bolingbroke had again
attacked Walpole, this time in a letter, the latter replied: "Whatever
contradictions these gentlemen may have observed in my character; there
is one which I'll venture to assure you, you will never discover, which
is my ever being alarmed at an opposition from one in the impotence of
disgrace, who could never terrify me in the zenith of his