e profit
to be made from the sale of his vote. Members not infrequently had
regular salaries from the government. "Sir Robert Walpole and the queen
both told me separately," wrote Lord Hervey, "that it (the victory of
the court) cost the king but 900_l_.--500_l_. to one man, and 400_l_.
to another; and that even those two sums were advanced to two men who
were to have received them at the end of the session had this question
never been moved, and who only took this opportunity to solicit prompt
payment."[111] Lord Chesterfield, in the same letter in which he spoke
of the corrupt influencing of elections as a high crime and
misdemeanor, recommends the Earl of Marchmont to _bribe_ "some of your
venal peers" to confess that they took money to vote for the
court.[112] "Ever since Lord Granville went out," wrote Horace Walpole
in 1744, "all has been in suspense. The leaders of the Opposition
immediately imposed silence upon their party; everything passed without
the least debate, in short, _all were making their bargains_. One has
heard of the corruption of courtiers, but, believe me the impudent
prostitution of patriots, going to market with their honesty, beats it
to nothing. Do but think of two hundred men _of the most consummate
virtue_, setting themselves to sale for three weeks!"[113] The
corruption of Parliament and the indifference, of members to any
interests other than their own, were pointedly expressed by Queen
Caroline in her reply to an address by Lord Stair[114]:--"I must,
therefore, once more ask you, my Lord, how you can have the assurance
to talk to me of your thinking the sense of constituents, their
interests, or their instructions any measure or rule for the conduct of
their representatives in Parliament. * * * To talk, therefore, in the
patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion, can move me, my
Lord, to nothing but laughter."

In the words of Mr. Lecky,[115] the government was "corrupt,
inefficient, and unheroic, but it was free from the gross vices of
continental administrations; it was moderate tolerant, and economical;
it was, with all its faults, a free government, and it contained in
itself the elements of reformation." The national industry and
resolution, particularly in the middle classes, brought about a great
increase of wealth, a remarkable development of manufactures and
commerce, which gave the country the extraordinary prosperity which it
has since, almost without a check, enjoy