One of the earliest acts of the Whig aristocracy, in the reign of George I., was to pass a measure through Parliament, lengthening the existence of that very Parliament to seven years, and giving to the King the power to continue all subsequent Parliaments to a like period. The Triennial Parliaments were thus lengthened by a corrupt majority. For the committal of the Septennial Bill there was a majority of 72 votes, and it is alleged by the _Westminster Review_, "that about 82 members of the honorable house had either fingered Walpole's gold, or pocketed the bank-notes which, by the purest accident, were left under their plates.... In the ten years which preceded the Septennial Act, the sum expended in Secret Service money was £337,960. In the ten years which followed the passing of the Septennial Act, the sum expended for Secret Service was £1,453,400." The same writer says: "The friends and framers of the Triennial Bill were for the most part Tories, and its opponents for the most part Whigs. The framers and friends of the Bill for long Parliaments were all Whigs, and its enemies all Tories." When the measure came before the Lords, we find Baron Bernstoff, on the King's behalf, actually canvassing Peers' wives, with promises of places for their relatives, in order to induce them to get their husbands to vote for the Bill. Another of the early infringements of public liberty by the Whig supporters of George I., was the passing (1 George I., c. 5) the Riot Act, which had not existed from the accession of James I. to the death of Queen Anne. Sir John Hinde Cotton, a few years afterwards, described this Act, which is still the law of England, as "An Act by which a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool a minister can use, had it in his power to put twenty or thirty of the best subjects of England to immediate death, without any trial or form, but that of reading a proclamation." In order to facilitate the King's desire to spend most of his time in Hanover, the third section of the Act of Settlement was repealed. Thackeray says: "Delightful as London city was, King George I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could, and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher one hundred years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's and sighed out, 'Was fur plunder!' The German women plundered, the German secretaries plundered, the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim."