Note 167 — Chapter IX

In Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., there is an amusing parallel—gravely drawn, however—between the mode in which his father, Sir Robert, "traded for members," and the manner in which Mr. Pelham carried on his corruption. Lord Mahon has called Sir Robert Walpole "the patron and parent of parliamentary corruption." (Hist. of England, I. 268.) But both Mr. Hallam and Mr. Macaulay say that it originated under Charles II., and both admit that it was practised down to the close of the American war. (Hallam's Const. Hist., III. 255, 256, 351-356. Macaulay's Hist. of England, III. 541-549.) The latter, in a very masterly analysis of its origin and history, treats it as a local disease, incident to the growth of the English constitution. It must be confessed, that it had become chronic.