DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

Under these circumstances corruption and bribery found a ready field, and flourished vigorously, stimu- lated and encouraged by the manifold resources of the State. One instance will suffice as an example. The Crown employed 11,500 officials for the collec- tion of the Excise and Customs duties. These were able to control seventy elections, and naturally they were docile instruments of corruption in the hands of the Government. Of the immense sums spent in this ignoble traffic, we can form some estimate from the fact that the Duke of Portland and Sir James Lowther each spent forty thousand pounds in the contests for Westmoreland and Cumberland; the contest for Northampton cost each of the rival parties thirty thousand pounds; the borough of Sudbury publicly advertised itself for sale ; and the city of Oxford undertook to secure the re-election of its representatives on condition of their paying the debts of the Corporation. It is true that the new generation of legislators no longer expected to find five-hundred-pound bank- notes under their plates when they dined with the Prime Minister, but a public office was opened for the bribery of Members of Parliament, and twenty- five thousand pounds were said to have been spent there in one day. Promotion in the Civil Service and the Army and preferments in the Church, were only dispensed to the supporters of the Government.