were honest men of the other party who would have answered, To stand by the liberties of England and the Protestant religion, and, if necessary, to die for them like Sidney.  But such consistency was unintelligible to many of the noble and the powerful.  Their object was to be safe in every event.  They therefore openly took the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted their word to the other.  They were indefatigable in obtaining commissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown land, under the great seal of William; and they had in their secret drawers promises of pardon in the handwriting of James.

Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough.  No three men could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the peculiar qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his villany.  The treason of Russell is to be attributed partly to fractiousness; the treason of Godolphin is to be attributed altogether to timidity; the treason of Marlborough was the treason of a man of great genius and boundless ambition.

It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of humour.  He had just accepted the command of the united naval forces of England and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the Fleet.  He was Treasurer of the Navy.  He had a pension of three thousand pounds a year.  Crown property near Charing Cross, to the value of eighteen thousand pounds, had been bestowed on him.  His indirect gains must have been immense.  But he was still dissatisfed.  In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable talents both for war and for administration, and with a certain public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the very worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, faithless.  He conceived that the great services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had not been adequately rewarded.  Every thing that was given to others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself.  A letter is still extant which he wrote to William about this time.  It is made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers.  The Admiral, with ironical professions of humility and loyalty, begins by asking permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulness would not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth.  His grievances were intolerable.  Other people got grants of royal domains; but he could get scarcely any thing.  Other people could provide for their dependants; but his recommendations were uniformly disregarded.  The income which he derived from the royal favour might seem large; but he had poor relations; and the government, instead of doing its duty by them, had most unhandsomely left them to his care.  He had a sister who ought to have a pension; for, without one, she could not give portions to her daughters.  He had a brother who, for want of a place, had been reduced to the melancholy necessity