The commissioners for stating the public accounts of the kingdom, had, in executing their office the preceding summer, discovered several practices relating to the affairs of the army, which they drew up in a report, and delivered to the House.

The Commons began their examination of the report with a member of their own, Mr. Robert Walpole, already mentioned; who, during his being secretary at war, had received five hundred guineas, and taken a note for five hundred pounds more, on account of two contracts for forage of the queen’s troops quartered in Scotland.  He endeavoured to excuse the first contract; but had nothing to say about the second.  The first appeared so plain and so scandalous to the Commons, that they voted the author of it guilty of a high breach of trust, and notorious corruption, committed him prisoner to the Tower, where he continued to the end of the session, and expelled him the House.[1] He was a person much caressed by the opposers of the Queen and ministry, having been first drawn into their party by his indifference to any principles, and afterwards kept steady by the loss of his place.  His bold, forward countenance, altogether a stranger to that infirmity which makes men bashful, joined to a readiness of speaking in public, hath justly entitled him, among those of his faction, to be a sort of leader of the second form.  The reader must excuse me for being so particular about one, who is otherwise altogether obscure.[2]

[Footnote 1:  See “Part Hist,” vi. 1071. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  Walpole was not too obscure, however, to be then the object of Bolingbroke’s attack; and in 1726, when Bolingbroke had again attacked Walpole, this time in a letter, the latter replied:  “Whatever contradictions these gentlemen may have observed in my character; there is one which I’ll venture to assure you, you will never discover, which is my ever being alarmed at an opposition from one in the impotence of disgrace, who could never terrify me in the zenith of his prosperity.”  “An Answer to the Occasional Writer.” [T.S.]]

Another part of the report concerned the Duke of Marlborough, who had received large sums of money, by way of gratuity, from those who were the undertakers for providing the army with bread.[3] This the Duke excused, in a letter to the commissioners, from the like practice of other generals:  but that excuse appeared to be of little weight, and the mischievous consequences of such a corruption were visible enough; since the money given by these undertakers were but bribes for connivance at their indirect dealings with the army.  And as frauds, that begin at the top, are apt to spread through all the subordinate ranks of those who have any share in the management, and to increase as they circulate:  so, in this case, for every thousand pounds given to the general, the soldiers at least suffered fourfold.

[Footnote 3:  See “The Examiner,” Nos. 17 and 28, in vol. ix. of this edition. [W.S.J.]]