able that the number of hirelings was greatly exaggerated by
vulgar report, and was never large, though often sufficient to turn the
scale on important divisions. An unprincipled minister eagerly accepted
the services of these mercenaries. An honest minister reluctantly
submitted, for the sake of the commonwealth, to what he considered as
a shameful and odious extortion. But during many years every minister,
whatever his personal character might be, consented, willingly or
unwillingly, to manage the Parliament in the only way in which the
Parliament could then be managed. It at length became as notorious that
there was a market for votes at the Treasury as that there was a market
for cattle in Smithfield. Numerous demagogues out of power declaimed
against this vile traffic; but every one of those demagogues, as soon as
he was in power, found himself driven by a kind of fatality to engage in
that traffic, or at least to connive at it. Now and then perhaps a man
who had romantic notions of public virtue refused to be himself the
paymaster of the corrupt crew, and averted his eyes while his less
scrupulous colleagues did that which he knew to be indispensable, and
yet felt to be degrading. But the instances of this prudery were
rare indeed. The doctrine generally received, even among upright and
honourable politicians, was that it was shameful to receive bribes, but
that it was necessary to distribute them. It is a remarkable fact that
the evil reached the greatest height during the administration of Henry
Pelham, a statesman of good intentions, of spotless morals in private
life, and of exemplary disinterestedness. It is not difficult to guess
by what arguments he and other well meaning men, who, like him, followed
the fashion of their age, quieted their consciences. No casuist, however
severe, has denied that it may be a duty to give what it is a crime to
take. It was infamous in Jeffreys to demand money for the lives of the
unhappy prisoners whom he tried at Dorchester and Taunton. But it was
not infamous, nay, it was laudable, in the kinsmen and friends of a
prisoner to contribute of their substance in order to make up a purse
for Jeffreys. The Sallee rover, who threatened to bastinado a Christian
captive to death unless a ransom was forthcoming, was an odious ruffian.
But to ransom a Christian captive from a Sallee rover was, not merely
an innocent, but a highly meritorious act. It would be improper in such
cases to use