k a
gallon and a half of Champagne and Burgundy at one sitting; in some
coffee-houses it was the custom, when the night's drinking ended, for
the company to burn their wigs. Some of Horace Walpole's letters prove
plainly enough that great gentlemen conducted themselves occasionally
very much as wild seamen would do in Shadwell or the Highway. What
would be thought if Lord Salisbury reeled into the House in a totally
drunken condition? The imagination cannot conceive the situation, and
the fact that the very thought is laughable shows how much we have
improved in essentials. In bygone days, a man who became a Minister
proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his
relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen. One lord held
eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments. A
Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new
loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for
he had but few associates to bribe. When patrols were set to guard the
Treasury at night, an epigram ran--

"From the night till the morning 'tis true all is right;
But who will secure it from morning till night?"

There was a perfect carnival of robbery and corruption, and the people
paid for all. Money gathered by public corruption was squandered in
private debauchery, while a sullen and helpless nation looked on.
Think of the change! A Minister now toils during seventeen hours per
day, and receives less than a successful barrister. He must give up
all the ordinary pleasures of life; and, in recompense for the
sacrifice, he can claim but little patronage. By most of the men in
office the work is undertaken on purely patriotic grounds; so that a
duke with a quarter of a million per year is content to labour like an
attorney's clerk.

If we think about the ladies of the old days, we are more than ever
driven to reflection. It is impossible to imagine a more insensate
collection of gamblers than the women of Horace Walpole's society.
Well-bred harpies won and lost fortunes, and the vice became a raging
pest. A young politician could not further his own prospects better
than by letting some high-born dame win his money; if the youth won
the lady's money, then a discreet forgetfulness of the debt was
profitable to him. The rattle of dice and the shuffle of cards sounded
wherever two or three fashionable persons were gathered together; men
and women quarrelled, and soc