If the most elaborate provisions for standing on guard against fraud could have kept the civil administration of the navy honest, these orders of the Earl of Northumberland, renewed and emphasised by the Duke of York, ought to have effected that wholesome purpose. Nothing can surpass the care taken to check the malpractices of one individual by the vigilance of another. The ideal which has been satirically attributed to certain Continental politicians, namely, the employment of half of the population as police spies on the other, would seem to have been reached in these instructions, and it would appear to be almost impossible for anyone to commit fraud under the vigilant watch of so many competent observers. But we know as a matter of fact that the administration of the navy was very corrupt under Charles II., and that it continued to be corrupt throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, and that the abuses were so flagrant in the beginning of this as to provoke the appointment of a Commission when Lord St. Vincent was head of the Admiralty. The great original cause of this failure was unquestionably a moral one. The most artful provisions for preventing pilfering and waste are useless when the officials whose duty it is to carry them out are themselves wasteful and dishonest. We know that in the reign of Charles II., everybody, from the king downwards, looked to make his pleasure, or his profit, out of his share of the government of the country. The more honest among them were content to get what gifts they could from those who had occasion to frequent their office and thought it worth while to buy their friendship. Samuel Pepys, for instance, who, according to the standard of the time, was rather an honest official, took every penny he could get. Pepys, however, seems to have drawn the line at entering into a conspiracy to steal stores or to supply bad ones. Others who were less scrupulous pushed his practices a step or two further. They were not content with merely taking such gifts as might be made them by a contractor who still supplied good stores. They were ready to help a fraudulent tradesman to sell rubbish to the State, provided he made it worth their while. Even short of this excess a great deal was done which was in reality fraudulent. There came to be a kind of tradition that what was taken from the State was stolen from nobody in particular. Men who were honourable enough in private transactions had no scruple about licking their fingers "like good cooks" when what stuck to them was the money voted for the navy. Such men were not likely to be vigilant in watching the similar offences of other people. They were too conscious that they themselves were vulnerable. Thus a tradition of dishonesty and a habit of waste established themselves in the dockyards, and it at last reached such a height that money disappeared by millions in a few years.