There were loud complaints of the vileness of the commissariat still, and it was declared that far more of our men fell by disease from bad and adulterated food than in battle. The complaints against Russell, who was called to the bar of the House, he threw upon the Admiralty, and the Admiralty on the commissariat department. Russell complained also of the ministry, and particularly of the Earl of Nottingham; and thus, by this system of mutual recrimination, all parties contrived to escape. The Commons, however, were not so to be silenced. They charged on the officers of the army, on its commissariat, on the men in office, and on the Government officials almost universally, the same monstrous system of corruption, peculation, and negligence of every thing but making money for themselves. They insisted on a rigorous examination of all the accounts by their own members, and they voted that all salaries and profits arising from any place or places under the Crown should not amount to more than five hundred pounds for any one person, except in the cases of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Commissioners of the Great Seal, the judges, ambassadors, and officers of the army and navy.

GEORGE SAVILLE, MARQUIS OF HALIFAX.

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There were plenty of posts in which this restriction would have been most salutary, for men in some of the most trivial and useless of them were pocketing many thousands of pounds; but it was soon found that the whole nation could not furnish sufficient people patriotic enough to serve their country for five hundred pounds a year each; and, therefore, in a few weeks a fresh resolution was taken, which negatived this.

The business of the year 1691 closed by the passing of a Bill to exclude all Catholics, in pursuance of the Treaty of Limerick, from holding any office in Ireland, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, or from practising in any profession, or sitting in the Irish Parliament, before they had taken the Oath of Allegiance. The Commons attempted by this Bill to make it necessary for a Catholic to take also the Oath of Supremacy, and the Oath against Transubstantiation; but the Lords showed that this was contrary to the first article of the Treaty of Limerick, and this clause was struck out, and the Bill then passed. When the agitation for Catholic emancipation commenced, loud complaints were made that by this Bill the Treaty of Limerick had been violated. But this was a mistake; the violation of it took place some years afterwards by another Bill. The first article of the Treaty provided that on a Catholic taking the Oath of Allegiance, he should be admitted to all the privileges specified, according to the law in Charles II.'s time; and this law, whether always enforced or not, empowered the Crown to tender this Oath to all subjects.

The year 1692 was opened by Parliament bringing forward several important Bills, which were, however, too much contested to be carried this year. The first of these was a Bill for regulating the trade of the East India Company, increasing the number of shareholders, restricting the amount of stock in the hands of individuals, and incorporating a new Company which had sprung up with the old one. The East India Company had become a most flourishing concern. From the Restoration to this time, only thirty-three years, its annual imports had risen in value from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds. Its capital amounted only to three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, but it yielded an annual profit of thirty per cent., besides having, up to 1676, doubled the value of the whole capital. The Company, however, instead of increasing in shareholders, was rapidly sinking into a monopoly of a few individuals. Amongst these Sir Josiah Child, whom we lately quoted in our review of the commerce of the period, stood chief, and was become, as it were, the king and despot of the whole concern. Five members were said to possess or hold one-sixth of all the votes, and amongst these Child had the predominant amount. His income from the Company was stated at twenty thousand pounds a year, and his word was law in it.

These enormous profits naturally called forth a rival company, and the contest between them grew from year to year till it came to occupy and divide the spirit of the whole mercantile world. The new Company insisted on the right of trading also to many parts of India, the old one stood on their charter as a charter of exclusion of all others. The favour of Government was purchased by the old Company by well-applied gifts of money to Government, and by sharing with Government the profitable patronage. The question was now brought before Parliament, and hotly debated; but the Bill was dropped for the present, and a proposition to William to grant a charter to the new Company was evaded, on the plea of requiring deep consideration.

The next important Bill was for regulating trials in cases of high treason. It was time that great reforms should take place on this head. During the Stuart times men had been most easily and conveniently put out of the way, by counsel being refused them under charge of high treason, and by refusal to allow them the perusal of the Bill of Indictment previous to the trial. Juries were packed by sheriffs, and State prisoners were thus murdered at will. The same gross injustice extended to prisoners charged with other offences; but the great strain towards injustice was in the case of those charged by the State with treason, and against whom it employed the ablest lawyers of the realm. By this machinery, all through the reigns of the Stuarts, as well as of their predecessors, whole throngs of men, many of them of extraordinary endowments and high rank, had been judicially destroyed. The proposed Bill, therefore, provided that every person charged with high treason should be allowed to have his own counsel, to have a copy of the indictment delivered to him ten days before the trial, along with a list of the freeholders from whom his jury were to be selected, that he might have opportunity to challenge any of them. The Bill was most desirable, but it was frustrated for the time by the Lords insisting on an extension of their own privileges regarding such trials. Instead of being tried by the court of the Lord High Steward—who could summon twelve or more peers at his discretion if the Parliament was not sitting—they demanded that, during the recess, as during the Session, every peer should be summoned to attend any such trial. The Commons somewhat unreasonably opposed this very proper reform, on the ground that the peers had too many privileges already, and the Bill dropped for the time.