Later on, corruption took the form of spending a great deal more than was necessary, rather than supplying bad goods. The prevailing sentiment of the time looked upon robbing the State very much as otherwise quite honourable people still look upon a little smuggling. The attempt to make the principal officers of the navy jointly responsible met with the success which, as experience has shown, generally follows on the effort to give a collective character to what from the necessity of the case must needs be individual. It may be laid down as a general rule, that where several men are said to be jointly responsible, one of two things will happen. Either they will all insist upon acting effectively, and in that case nothing will be done; or else one of them will gain a superiority of influence, and then the others, though nominally his equals, will in reality be reduced to the position of subordinates. It was the second of these alternatives which became practically established in the working of the Navy Office. The comptroller, who in theory was empowered only to check the treasurer and surveyor, became gradually the most important officer of the Board. The Lord High Admiral, or the Commissioners who were discharging the office, learned from him what had been done or what it was desirable to do. In the same way the members of our own Admiralty Board, though in theory jointly responsible with the First Lord, have in practice become subordinate to him. In the course of time, too, other departments began to group themselves around the Navy Board, in proportion as the work grew more complex. The Commonwealth had already found it necessary to establish a special commission for dealing with the Sick and Hurt. The Sick and Hurt Office became a permanent part of the machinery of naval administration. To it was left the management of the Chest at Chatham. This fund, originally established by Sir John Hawkins in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was fed by the fines levied for breach of discipline and by percentages of prizes. It was meant to be devoted to the support of seamen disabled in service, either by sickness or wounds. In the reign of William III. it was reinforced by a sum levied on the pay of all seamen, and in later days the maladministration of this fund grew into an outrageous abuse. The business of victualling the navy had originally been discharged by an official in the department of the surveyor, but it grew beyond his power to discharge. At the very end of the reign of Charles II., in 1683, a special Victualling Board was created. Later on, other departments were made separate, such, for instance, as the Commissioners for Transports, who were established and abolished, and then established again. Then there was a special Pay Office; and it must be understood that, while the main lines remained unchanged, there was much that was fluid, unstable, and tentative in details. When it