debaucheries. And this was said of the man who made the fortune
of Joseph Addison, and of Isaac Newton.

Nothing had done more to diminish the influence of Montague in
the House of Commons than a step which he had taken a few weeks
before the meeting of the Parliament. It would seem that the
result of the general election had made him uneasy, and that he
had looked anxiously round him for some harbour in which he might
take refuge from the storms which seemed to be gathering. While
his thoughts were thus employed, he learned that the Auditorship
of the Exchequer had suddenly become vacant. The Auditorship was
held for life. The duties were formal and easy. The gains were
uncertain; for they rose and fell with the public expenditure;
but they could hardly, in time of peace, and under the most
economical administration, be less than four thousand pounds a
year, and were likely, in time of war, to be more than double of
that sum. Montague marked this great office for his own. He could
not indeed take it, while he continued to be in charge of the
public purse. For it would have been indecent, and perhaps
illegal, that he should audit his own accounts. He therefore
selected his brother Christopher, whom he had lately made a
Commissioner of the Excise, to keep the place for him. There was,
as may easily be supposed, no want of powerful and noble
competitors for such a prize. Leeds had, more than twenty years
before, obtained from Charles the Second a patent granting the
reversion to Caermarthen. Godolphin, it was said, pleaded a
promise made by William. But Montague maintained, and was, it
seems, right in maintaining, that both the patent of Charles and
the promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that
the right of appointing the Auditor belonged, not to the Crown,