ged, as William bitterly complained, with every hour. His own hold
over it grew less day by day. It was only through great pressure that he
succeeded in defeating by a majority of two a Place Bill which would
have rendered all his servants and Ministers incapable of sitting in the
Commons. He was obliged to use his veto to defeat a Triennial Bill
which, as he believed, would have destroyed what little stability of
purpose there was in the present Parliament. The Houses were in fact
without the guidance of recognized leaders, without adequate
information, and destitute of that organization out of which alone a
definite policy can come. Nothing better proves the inborn political
capacity of the English mind than that it should at once have found a
simple and effective solution of such a difficulty as this. The credit
of the solution belongs to a man whose political character was of the
lowest type. Robert, Earl of Sunderland, had been a Minister in the
later days of Charles the Second; and he had remained Minister through
almost all the reign of James. He had held office at last only by
compliance with the worst tyranny of his master and by a feigned
conversion to the Roman Catholic faith; but the ruin of James was no
sooner certain than he had secured pardon and protection from William by
the betrayal of the master to whom he had sacrificed his conscience and
his honour. Since the Revolution Sunderland had striven only to escape
public observation in a country retirement, but at this crisis he came
secretly forward to bring his unequalled sagacity to the aid of the
king. His counsel was to recognize practically the new power of the
Commons by choosing the Ministers of the Crown exclusively from among
the members of the party which was strongest in the Lower House.

[Sidenote: The New Ministerial System.]

As yet no Ministry in the modern sense of the term had existed. Each
great officer of State, Treasurer or Secretary or Lord Privy Seal, had
in theory been independent of his fellow-officers; each was the "King's
servant" and responsible for the discharge of his special duties to the
king alone. From time to time one Minister, like Clarendon, might tower
above the rest and give a general direction to the whole course of
government, but the predominance was merely personal and never
permanent; and even in such a case there were colleagues who were ready
to oppose or even impeach the statesman who overshadowed them. It was