To eke out the sustenance of himself and family, hard labor in
his own garden was by no means the most menial of the services he was
obliged to perform. His wife was usually a servant-maid taken from a
neighboring country house, and the kitchen was his most common resort
when he visited the home of a squire. A private chaplain was little
above a servant. In London, many clergymen fell into the prisons
through debt or crime. From the ranks of the lower clergy were
recruited the "buck-parsons," so long a scandal to the church and to
public morality; and the large body of "Fleet parsons," of infamous
character, in the pay of gin shops and taverns, who, for a trifling
sum, performed what were legal marriages between boys and girls,
drunkards and runaways.
The corruption in political life, begun under the Restoration and
increased during the Revolution, was amplified and reduced to a system
under Walpole until government seemed to be based on bribery.
Ridiculing public spirit and disinterested motives in others, he bribed
George the Second with the promise of a large civil list, bribed Queen
Caroline with a large allowance, bribed members of Parliament with
sinecures, pensions, or with direct payment of money, and paid himself
with wealth and a peerage. Corruption was so firmly rooted as an engine
of power, that no serious discredit attached to it.
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