The mercenary character of Parliament allowed the first two Georges to have much their own way as long as the money held out. Liberty of the subject, if not in great danger, had certainly lost its natural guardian. Few seats depended on a direct and popular vote. Most of them were in the gift of noblemen or rich commoners, "rotten boroughs," having only "the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins."[110] Defoe tells us that the market price of a seat was a thousand guineas. The object of the purchaser was less often the service of his country, or even an honorable ambition, than the 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."