liberated on insufficient bail, to see that the juries were not
composed of persons hostile to the government. In the days of
Charles and James, the Solicitors of the Treasury had been with
too much reason accused of employing all the vilest artifices of
chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court. The new government
ought to have made a choice which was above all suspicion.
Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon Aaron Smith, an
acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been the legal
adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who
had been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard
Hampden, a man of decided opinions but of moderate temper,
objected to this appointment. His objections however were
overruled. The Jacobites, who hated Smith and had reason to hate
him, affirmed that he had obtained his place by bullying the
Lords of the Treasury, and particularly by threatening that, if
his just claims were disregarded, he would be the death of
Hampden.31

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been
mentioned were publicly announced: and meanwhile many important
events had taken place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had
been sworn in, it was necessary to submit to them a grave and
pressing question. Could the Convention now assembled be turned
into a Parliament? The Whigs, who had a decided majority in the
Lower House, were all for the affirmative. The Tories, who knew
that, within the last month, the public feeling had undergone a
considerable change, and who hoped that a general election would
add to their strength, were for the negative. They maintained
that to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were
indispensably necessary. The Convention had not been summoned by