THREE:Melville was now permitted by the House of Peers to go down to the House of Commons, notwithstanding their conclusion on the subject, to make his defence, and he made a very long speech, contending that he had not embezzled a farthing of the public money, and exalting his services to the country, especially in his India administration. But on the head of Secret Service Money he was as close as the grave. He declared that "if he had disclosed any of these transactions he should have felt himself guilty not only of a breach of public duty, but of a most unwarrantable breach of private honour." There were twenty thousand pounds which he never did, and never could, account for on this ground, and there were forty thousand pounds drawn at once by Pitt from the Navy Fund. He said he knew very well for what purposes these sums had been paid, but that nothing would compel him to disclose it. When it was asked him whether Mr. Trotter had not kept large sums belonging to the Navy Fund in Coutts's Bank, and speculated with them to his own great enrichment, he admitted that Trotter had had such sums for considerable times in Coutts's Bank, but that they were always forthcoming when wanted, and that no single payment had been delayed on that account; and that out of the one hundred and thirty-four millions which had passed through his hands, nothing had been lost. He praised Trotter in the highest manner, but was silent as to the private use that he had so long, and to such advantage to himself, made of the public money. He admitted that he had himself held considerable sums of this money at different times in his own hands, but had repaid the whole before quitting[503] office, and this was all that the Act of 1785 required. He seemed to admit that he had paid money out of the Navy Fund for other than naval objects, and for these secret service purposes. Some of these were in Scotland, of which, also, he had the administration to a certain degree. And here the public called to mind that Watt, the spy and informer against the Scottish Reformers, had acknowledged to have been employed and paid by Dundas, so that it was clear whither some of the Navy Fund had gone. Melville entered into long explanations regarding a written release which had passed reciprocally between him and Trotter on winding up their affairs, in which they agreed to destroy all their vouchers for the sums paid away. This looked very black, but Melville contended that it was only a matter of coursea thing constantly done by officials in like circumstances, which, if true, made the matter all the worse for the country. But Melville contended that this clause in the release was merely a form; that it did not mean that they should literally destroy the vouchers, but only that they should be rendered invalid as evidence in any prosecution, which very little mended the matter. Melville declared that he had not, in consequence of the clause, destroyed a single paper.The Revolution of 1688, which overthrew absolutism in the State, overthrew it also in the Church. The political principles of William of Orange, and the Whigs who brought him in, were not more opposed to the absolutism of the Stuarts than the ecclesiastical principles of the new king and queen, and the prelates whom they introduced into the Church, were to the high-churchism of Laud, Sancroft, Atterbury, and their section of the Establishment. When Parliament, on the accession of William and Mary, presented the Oath of Allegiance to the Lords and Commons, eight of the bishops, including Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, refused it; and of these, five were of the number of the seven who had refused to sign James II.'s Declaration of Indulgence, and thus gave the immediate occasion to the outbreak ending in the Revolution. Thus a fresh faction was produced in the Establishment, that of the Non-jurors, who were,[142] after much delay and patience, finally excluded from their livings. As the existing law could not touch the non-juring bishops so long as they absented themselves from Parliament, where the oath had to be put to them, a new Act was passed, providing that all who did not take the new oaths before the 1st of August, 1689, should be suspended six months, and at the end of that time, in case of non-compliance, should be ejected from their sees. Still the Act was not rigorously complied with; they were indulged for a year longer, when, continuing obstinate, they were, on the 1st of February, 1691, excluded from their sees. Two of the eight had escaped this sentence by dying in the interimnamely, the Bishops of Worcester and Chichester. The remaining six who were expelled were Sancroft, the Primate, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Frampton of Gloucester, Lloyd of Norwich, and White of Peterborough. In the room of these were appointed prelates of Whig principles, the celebrated Dr. Tillotson being made Primate. Other vacancies had recently or did soon fall out; so that, within three years of his accession, William had put in sixteen new bishops, and the whole body was thus favourable to his succession, and, more or less, to the new views of Church administration.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams
