Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/137

Rh were combined, without any of the advantages of either. The home manufactures were extensively injured by a glut of India goods, the prices obtained for which at the same time entirely failed to remunerate the importers. And still the bitterest hostility divided the two companies, whose quarrel, indeed, gradually became one in which the whole nation took part, the Tories siding with the Old Company, the Whigs with the New, after the manner in which the whirlpool of political faction is wont to draw all things to it. In the city of London in particular, ever since the passing of the act of 1698, which had called the New Company into existence, all the powerful interest of the other company had been strenuously and perseveringly exerted against the government; and Burnet acknowledges "that this act, together with the inclinations which those of the Whigs who were in good posts had expressed for keeping up a greater land force, did contribute to the blasting the reputation they had hitherto maintained of being good patriots, and was made use of over England by the Tories to disgrace both the king and them." And the Tory majority in the new House of Commons which met in February, 1701, appears to have been the effect of the returning popular feeling in favour of the Old Company, and of the exertions of their partisans throughout the kingdom, more than of any other cause. The elections, indeed, had turned principally upon the contention between the two companies; but Burnet himself is constrained to admit that what systematic bribery of the electors took place was chiefly, if not exclusively, on the part of the New Company and his own friends and theirs, the Whigs. When the House met, he tells us, "reports were brought to them of elections that had been scandalously purchased by some who were concerned in the New East India Company. Instead of drinking and entertainments, by which elections were formerly managed, now a most scandalous practice was brought in of buying votes, with so little decency, that the electors engaged themselves by