ehall 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 pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence; and thus,
at the cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious
crown which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which would
instantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once
formidable kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neither
in William's power nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms that
the liberty and religion of England could be protected against the most
formidable enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides were
strown with the wrecks of the Armada. The body politic, which, while it
remained in repose, had presented a superficial appearance of health
and vigour, was now under the necessity