WILLIAM THE THIRD.

23

but tlieir moral character was as bad as his. One of them chap.

XXIII.

was the late Secretary of the Treasury, Guy, who had been min.turned out of his place for corruption. Another was thelate Speaker, Trevor, who had, from the chair, put thequestion whether he was or was not a rogue, and had beenforced to pronounce that the Ayes had it. A third wasCharles Duneombe, long the greatest goldsmith of Lom-bard Street, and now one of the greatest landowners of theNorth Biding of Yorkshire. Possessed of a private fortuneequal to that of any duke, he had not thought it beneathhim to accept the place of Cashier of the Excise, and hadperfectly understood how to make that place lucrative: buthe had recently been ejected from office by Montague, whothought, with good reason, that he was not a man to betrusted. Such advocates as Trevor, Guy and Duneombecould do little for Sunderland in debate. The statesmenof the Junto would do nothing for him. They had undoubt-edly owed much to him. His influence, cooperating withtheir own great abilities and with the force of circumstan-ces , had induced the King to commit the direction of theinternal administration of the realm to a Whig Cabinet.

But the distrust which the old traitor and apostate inspiredwas not to be overcome. The ministers could not be surethat he was not, while smiling on them, whispering in con-fidential tones to them, pouring out, as it might seem, allhis heart to them, really calumniating them in the closet orsuggesting to the opposition some ingenious mode of at-tacking them. They had very recently been thwarted by