system of patronage and emoluments—classes that brought increasing pressure on the Crown and ministers for promotion, places, and pensions as England grew in wealth and population. There were only fifty-nine temporal peers in the last Parliament of Queen Elizabeth; by the opening of the eighteenth century the number had risen to one hundred and sixty-eight; between 1700 and 1760, there were created twenty-six dukes, nineteen marquises, seventy-one earls, fifty-three viscounts, and one hundred and eleven barons, besides numerous baronets, knights, and decorated persons. "Peerages, baronetcies, and other titles of honor, patronage and court favor for the rich!" exclaimed May. "Places, pensions, and bribes for the needy!"
Of such was the stuff of English politics in the eighteenth century. To the spoils of domestic office, the numerous posts in India and America merely added more jobs for dexterous suppliants. No poet had yet coined a phrase like "the white man's burden” or “public service" to give ethical tone to the operations of those who labored at the ends of the empire.
Most of the royal executives for the American provinces were selected from among English politicians, soldiers, and lawyers of an adventurous temper; a few were taken from the more pliant placemen in the colonies. Some of the governors were able administrators of comprehensive views, prepared to live on good terms with the king's subjects committed to their care. Others were martinets with the morals and manners of an English drill sergeant. A few were frankly coarse and brutal; of this tendency was Berkeley of Virginia, who rejoiced in the absence of schools and newspapers and took pleasure in drowning with blood Nathaniel Bacon's uprising. "The old fool," cried Charles II, when he heard of the wholesale executions, "has taken more lives in that naked country, than I for the murder of my father."
On one thing a very large portion of the governors were agreed, namely, the increase of their private fortunes.
