frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of
crown lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for
ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold
at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent Garden
or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying
for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the
most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots,
and in the days of James, the priests. From the palace which was
the chief seat of this pestilence the taint had diffused itself
through every office and through every rank in every office, and
had every where produced feebleness and disorganization. So rapid
was the progress of the decay that, within eight years after the
time when Oliver had been the umpire of Europe, the roar of the
guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Tower of London. The vices
which had brought that great humiliation on the country had ever
since been rooting themselves deeper and spreading themselves
wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of the gross
abuses which disgraced the naval administration. Yet the naval
administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved the
contempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France
and Holland. The military administration was still worse. The
courtiers took bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated the
soldiers: the commissaries sent in long bills for what had never
been furnished: the keepers of the arsenals sold the public
stores and pocketed the price. But these evils, though they had
sprung into existence and grown to maturity under the government
of Charles and James, first made themselves severely felt under
the government of William. For Charles and James were content to
be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful and ambitious
neighbour: they submitted to his ascendency: they shunned with