t subjected to the restraints of the nineteenth
century, in a legislative body which feared neither the King nor the
public, there should be corruption.

The plague spot began to be visible and palpable in the days of the
Cabal. Clifford, the boldest and fiercest of the wicked Five, had
the merit of discovering that a noisy patriot, whom it was no longer
possible to send to prison, might be turned into a courtier by a
goldsmith's note. Clifford's example was followed by his successors.
It soon became a proverb that a Parliament resembled a pump. Often, the
wits said, when a pump appears to be dry, if a very small quantity of
water is poured in, a great quantity of water gushes out: and so, when
a Parliament appears to be niggardly, ten thousand pounds judiciously
given in bribes will often produce a million in supplies. The evil was
not diminished, nay, it was aggravated, by that Revolution which freed
our country from so many other evils. The House of Commons was now more
powerful than ever as against the Crown, and yet was not more strictly
responsible than formerly to the nation. The government had a new motive
for buying the members; and the members had no new motive for refusing
to sell themselves. William, indeed, had an aversion to bribery; he
resolved to abstain from it; and, during the first year of his reign, he
kept his resolution. Unhappily the events of that year did not encourage
him to persevere in his good intentions. As soon as Caermarthen was
placed at the head of the internal administration of the realm, a
complete change took place. He was in truth no novice in the art of
purchasing votes. He had, sixteen years before, succeeded Clifford at
the Treasury, had inherited Clifford's tactics, had improved upon them,
and had employed them to an extent which would have amazed the inventor.
From the day on which Caermarthen was called a second time to the
chief direction of affairs, parliamentary corruption continued to be
practised, with scarcely any intermission, by a long succession of
statesmen, till the close of the American war. Neither of the great
English parties can justly charge the other with any peculiar guilt on
this account. The Tories were the first who introduced the system and
the last who clung to it; but it attained its greatest vigour in the
time of Whig ascendency. The extent to which parliamentary support was
bartered for money cannot be with any precision ascertained. But it
seems prob