In order to make such a peace it was necessary to remove Marlborough. Some accusations were pressed against him to secure his removal. He was charged with having taken perquisites from the contractors who were supplying the army with bread, and with having deducted two and one half per cent. from the pay which England allowed to the foreign troops in her service. Marlborough's defence would not have been considered satisfactory in our day; and indeed it is impossible to think of any such accusation being made, or any such defence being needed, in times like ours. Imagination can hardly conceive the possibility of such charges being seriously made against the Duke of Wellington, for example, or the Duke of Wellington condescending to plead custom and usage in reply to them. But in Marlborough's day things were very different, and Marlborough was able {95} to show that, as regarded some of the accusations, he had only done what was customary among men in his position, and what he had full authority for doing; and, as regarded others, that he had applied the sums he got to the business of the State as secret service money, and had not made any personal profit. He did not, indeed, produce any accounts; but, assuming his defence to be well founded, it is quite possible that the keeping of accounts might have been an undesirable and inconvenient practice. At all events it was certain that Marlborough had not done any worse than other statesmen of the time, in civil as well as in military service, had been in the habit of doing; and considering all the conditions of the period, the defence which he set up ought to have been satisfactory to every one. It probably would have satisfied his enemies but that they were determined to get rid of him. They were, indeed, compelled to get rid of him in order to make their secret treaty with France, and they succeeded. Marlborough was dismissed from all his employments, and went for a time into exile. The English people, therefore, saw that peace had been made by the sacrifice of the greatest English commander who, up to that time, had ever taken the field in their service. The treaty had been obtained by the most shameless intrigues to bring about the downfall of this great soldier. No matter how desirable in itself the peace might be, no matter how reasonable the conditions on which it was based, yet it became a national disgrace when secured by means like these. Nor was this all: the Tory statesmen finding it imperative for their purpose to have a majority in the House of Lords, as well as in the House of Commons, prevailed upon the Queen to stretch her royal prerogative to the extent of making twelve peers. All these new peers were Tories; one of them was Mr. Masham, husband of the woman who had assisted so efficiently in the degradation of the Duke of Marlborough. When they first appeared in the House of Lords, a Whig statesman ironically asked them {96} whether they proposed to vote