It was no wonder therefore that in the first of the new king's parliaments an overwhelming majority appeared in support of the Whigs. But the continuance of that majority for more than thirty years was not wholly due to the unswerving support which the Crown gave its Ministers or to the secession of the Tories. In some measure it was due to the excellent organization of the Whig party. While their adversaries were divided by differences of principle and without leaders of real eminence, the Whigs stood as one man on the principles of the Revolution and produced great leaders who carried them into effect. They submitted with admirable discipline to the guidance of a knot of great nobles, to the houses of Bentinck, Manners, Campbell, and Cavendish, to the Fitzroys and Lennoxes, the Russells and Grenvilles, families whose resistance to the Stuarts, whose share in the Revolution, whose energy in setting the line of Hanover on the throne, gave them a claim to power. It was due yet more largely to the activity with which the Whigs devoted themselves to the gaining and preserving an ascendency in the House of Commons. The support of the commercial classes and of the great towns was secured not only by a resolute maintenance of public credit, but by the special attention which each ministry paid to questions of trade and finance. Peace and the reduction of the land-tax conciliated the farmers and the landowners, while the Jacobite sympathies of the bulk of the squires, and their consequent withdrawal from all share in politics, threw even the representation of the shires for a time into Whig hands. Of the county members, who formed the less numerous but the weightier part of the lower House, nine-tenths were for some years relatives and dependents of the great Whig families. Nor were coarser means of controlling Parliament neglected. The wealth of the Whig houses was lavishly spent in securing a monopoly of the small and corrupt constituencies which made up a large part of the borough representation. It was spent yet more unscrupulously in parliamentary bribery. Corruption was older than Walpole or the Whig Ministers, for it sprang out of the very transfer of power to the House of Commons which had begun with the Restoration. The transfer was complete, and the House was supreme in the State; but while freeing itself from the control of the Crown, it was as yet imperfectly responsible to the people. It was only at election time that a member felt the pressure of public opinion. The secrecy of parliamentary proceedings, which had been needful as a safeguard against royal interference with debate, served as a safeguard against interference on the part of constituencies. This strange union of immense power with absolute freedom from responsibility brought about its natural results in the bulk of members. A vote was too valuable to be given without recompense, and parliamentary support had to be bought by places, pensions, and bribes in hard cash.