A.D. 1689
—1776.

was not
well fitted
to exercise
this respon
nbility
judicrously.


Trading
Companies
had recourse
 to
corrupt
means of
pbtaining
public
supports

104 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
discriminating between the claims of different interests,
and for determining how far any of them were compatible
with, or inimical to, the public welfare. It has already been
pointed out that all interference with industry, or commerce,
on public grounds must be beneficial to some individuals.
and deleterious to others, In all State intervention in
economic affairs, there is a constant temptation to subordinate
 the public good to some private gain. The reasons
alleged for favouring particular interests were often extremely
 plausible; and in any case, the House of Commons
of that period was singularly unfitted for the discharge of
the delicate duty of promoting the material prosperity of
the realm. The men who had come to the front, after the
Revolution, do not seem to have been of a better type,
morally or socially, than the members of the Long Parliament?.
 In all probability they were less incorruptible;
and their temptations were greater, as the resources in the
hands of the moneyed interest were much larger than they
had ever been before. The East India Companies were the
chief sinners in connection with the bribery which went
on during the last decade of the seventeenth century.
Sir Josiah Child had made large presents to obtain royal
favour, and now he was equally lavish in securing Parliamentary
 support’. The promoters of the new Company
struck out a line for themselves, and bribed the electors*
as well as the members of the House. Constitutional
changes had brought about a state of affairs in which their
privileges rendered Members of Parliament free from the
dread of royal displeasure, while there was little danger
that their action would be criticised by their constituents’.
However much William IIL and his advisers might regret
the necessity, they felt themselves forced to follow the
example of Clifford and the Cabal, and purchase support
in the Commons. The practice was developed still farther
by Walpole, and it was by means of this guilty alliance,
between the Crown and a section of the Commons, that the

1 See above, p. 16.
i: Davenant, The True Picture of a Modern Whig, in Works, Iv. 128. See
p. 183 above. 8 Macaulay, History, Iv. (1855), 426, 551.
4 Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time, Iv. 464; Ralph, History of
England, 11. 926. 6 Macaulay, History, ur. 544.