But during many years every minister, whatever his personal character might be, consented, willingly or unwillingly, to manage the Parliament in the only way in which the Parliament could then be managed.

It at length became as notorious that there was a market for votes at the Treasury as that there was a market for cattle in Smithfield.

Numerous demagogues out of power declaimed against this vile traffic; but every one of those demagogues, as soon as he was in power, found himself driven by a kind of fatality to engage in that traffic, or at least to connive at it.

Now and then perhaps a man who had romantic notions of public virtue refused to be himself the paymaster of the corrupt crew, and averted his eyes while his less scrupulous colleagues did that which he knew to be indispensable, and yet felt to be degrading.

But the instances of this prudery were rare indeed.