much of a very useful sort of knowledge, and of a very useful sort of ability, tried to induce the ministry to come to the rescue.  It was particularly important to soothe Wharton, who had been exasperated by his recent disappointment, and had probably exasperated the other members of the junto.  He was sent for to the palace.  The King himself intreated him to be reconciled to the Lord Chamberlain, and to prevail on the Whig leaders in the Lower House to oppose any motion which Dyke or Norris might make.  Wharton answered in a manner which made it clear that from him no help was to be expected.  Sunderland’s terrors now became insupportable.  He had requested some of his friends to come to his house that he might consult them; they came at the appointed hour, but found that he had gone to Kensington, and had left word that he should soon be back.  When he joined them, they observed that he had not the gold key which is the badge of the Lord Chamberlain, and asked where it was.  “At Kensington,” answered Sunderland.  They found that he had tendered his resignation, and that it had been, after a long struggle, accepted.  They blamed his haste, and told him that, since he had summoned them to advise him on that day, he might at least have waited till the morrow.  “To morrow,” he exclaimed, “would have ruined me.  To night has saved me.”

Meanwhile, both the disciples of Somers and the disciples of Trenchard were grumbling at Harley’s resolution.  The disciples of Somers maintained that, if it was right to have an army at all, it must be right to have an efficient army.  The disciples of Trenchard complained that a great principle had been shamefully given up.  On the vital issue, Standing Army or no Standing Army, the Commons had pronounced an erroneous, a fatal decision.  Whether that army should consist of five regiments or of fifteen was hardly worth debating.  The great dyke which kept out arbitrary power had been broken.  It was idle to say that the breach was narrow; for it would soon be widened by the flood which would rush in.  The war of pamphlets raged more fiercely than ever.  At the same time alarming symptoms began to appear among the men of the sword.  They saw themselves every day described in print as the scum of society, as mortal enemies of the liberties of their country.  Was it reasonable,—­such was the language of some scribblers,—­that an honest gentleman should pay a heavy land tax, in order to support in idleness and luxury a set of fellows who requited him by seducing his dairy maids and shooting his partridges?  Nor was it only in Grub Street tracts that such reflections were to be found.  It was known all over the town that uncivil things had been said of the military profession in the House of Commons, and that Jack Howe, in particular, had, on this subject, given the rein to his wit and to his ill nature.  Some rough and daring veterans, marked with the scars of Steinkirk and singed with the smoke of Namur, threatened vengeance for these insults.