“The finances of Great Britain,” he says, “as they were managed in former times, could never have sustained the cost of such a war for a tenth part of the time. But expense now seemed no obstacle to the government. A new engine of surpassing strength had been discovered for extracting capital out of the country; and the able statesmen who had it in their hands felt it to be not less serviceable in consolidating the internal power, than in meeting the external expenses of the new dynasty. “When this system first began, the nation was not sensible of the important consequences to which it would lead. They thought it could only be a temporary expedient; and that, though it might, perhaps, lead to a few millions being added to the national debt, yet that would be all. Though from the first, accordingly, its progress was viewed with a jealous eye by the thinking few, it made but little impression upon the unthinking many, before the peace of Ryswick. But when the War of the Succession began, in 1702, and continued without intermission, attended by daily and increasing expenditure, for ten years, the apprehensions of a large part of the nation became excessive. At the Revolution the national debt was £661,000; by 1710 it exceeded £50,000,000. “The wars in which William was of necessity engaged, the loans which they rendered unavoidable, and which the commercial wealth of the nation enabled it to advance, and the great increase in the expenditure of the Exchequer, all conspired to place a vast and unprecedented amount of patronage in the hands of government. This was systematically directed to buy off opposition in Parliament, and secure a majority in the constituencies. Corruption, in every possible form, from the highest to the lowest, was employed in all parts of Great Britain, especially among the urban electors, and with such success, that almost every measure of government passed without difficulty through both Houses of Parliament. The nation had shaken off the prerogatives of the crown, but they had fallen under the domination of its influence. The gold of the Exchequer was found to be more powerful than the penalties of the Star-Chamber.”