twice a week before the opening of Parliament, to draw up in public
meetings the complaints of the British merchantmen against Sweden. On
this small fraction the Ministers relied; they were even busy in getting
up its demonstrations, as may be seen from the letters addressed by
Count Gyllenborg to Baron Goertz, dated 4th of November and 4th of
December, 1716, wanting, as they did, but the shadow of a pretext to
drive their "mercenary Parliament," as Gyllenborg calls it, where they
liked. The influence of these British merchants trading to Russia was
again exhibited in the year 1765, and our own times have witnessed the
working for his interest, of a Russian merchant at the head of the Board
of Trade, and of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the interest of a
cousin engaged in the Archangel trade.

The oligarchy which, after the "glorious revolution," usurped wealth and
power at the cost of the mass of the British people, was, of course,
forced to look out for allies, not only abroad, but also at home. The
latter they found in what the French would call _la haute bourgeoisie_,
as represented by the Bank of England, the money-lenders, State
creditors, East India and other trading corporations, the great
manufacturers, etc. How tenderly they managed the material interests of
that class may be learned from the whole of their domestic
legislation--Bank Acts, Protectionist enactments, Poor Regulations, etc.
As to their _foreign policy_, they wanted to give it the appearance at
least of being altogether regulated by the mercantile interest, an
appearance the more easily to be produced, as the exclusive interest of
one or the other small fraction of that class would, of course, be
always identified with this or that Ministerial measure. The interested
fraction then raised the commerce and navigation cry, which the nation
stupidly re-echoed.

At that time, then, there devolved on the Cabinet, at least, the _onus_
of inventing _mercantile pretexts_, however futile, for their measures
of foreign policy. In our own epoch, British Ministers have thrown this
burden on foreign nations, leaving to the French, the Germans, etc.,
the irksome task of discovering the _secret_ and _hidden_ mercantile
springs of their actions. Lord Palmerston, for instance, takes a step
apparently the most damaging to the material interests of Great Britain.
Up starts a State philosopher, on the other side of the Atlantic, or of
the Channel, or in the hear