f our national
character. That character was indeed, in essentials, what it has always
been. Veracity, uprightness, and manly boldness were then, as now,
qualities eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffused
among the great body of the people, were seldom to be found in the
class with which William was best acquainted. The standard of honour and
virtue among our public men was, during his reign, at the very lowest
point. His predecessors had bequeathed to him a court foul with all the
vices of the Restoration, a court swarming with sycophants, who
were ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon him as they had
abandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost in that ignoble crowd, was to
be found a man of true integrity and public spirit. Yet even such a
man could not long live in such society without much risk that the
strictness of his principles would be relaxed, and the delicacy of
his sense of right and wrong impaired. It was unjust to blame a prince
surrounded by flatterers and traitors for wishing to keep near him four
or five servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful even to death.

Nor was this the only instance in which our ancestors were unjust to
him. They had expected that, as soon as so distinguished a soldier and
statesman was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal
proof, they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, during
the first months of his reign, almost every thing went wrong. His
subjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began to
doubt whether he merited that reputation which he had won at his first
entrance into public life, and which the splendid success of his last
great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been in
a temper to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for the
maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was not
responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he had
found; and the machinery which he had found was all rust and rottenness.
From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglect
and fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every
department of the government. Honours and public trusts, peerages,
baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments,
commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for
provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson,
were sold at Whit