26

niSTOEY OF- ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XI.

1689 .Subordi-nate ap-point-ments.

yernment, and directed all his sarcasms and invectives against• the malecontents.*

The subordinate places in every public office were dividedbetween the two parties: but the Whigs had the larger share.Some persons, indeed, who did little honour to the Whig name,were largely recompensed for services which no good man■would have performed. Wildman was made Postmaster Ge-neral. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed onFerguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury wereboth very important and very invidious. It was the business ofthat officer to conduct political prosecutions, to collect theevidence, to instruct the counsel for the Crowm, to see that theprisoners were not liberated on insufficient bail, to see that thejuries were not composed of persons hostile to the government.In the days of Charles and James, the Solicitors of the Treasuryhad been with too much reason accused of employing all thevilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court.The new government ought to have made a choice which wasabove all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamerepitched upon Aaron Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipledpolitician, ■who had been the legal adviser of Titus Oates in thedays of the Popish Plot, and who had been deeply implicatedin the Bye House Plot. Kichard Hampden, a man of decidedopinions but of moderate temper, objected to this appointment.His objections however were overruled. The Jacobites, whohated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had

* Scarcely any man of that age is more frequently mentioned in pam-phlets and satires than Ilowe. In the famous petition of Legion, he isdesignated as “ that impudent scandal of Parliaments.” Mackay’s accountof him is curious. In a poem written in 1G90, which I have never seenexcept in manuscript, are the following lines:

“First for Jack Howe with his terrible talent,

Happy the female that scapes his lampoon;

Against the ladies excessively valiant,

But very respectful to a Dragoon.”