William Burnet, almost ruined by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble and sorely taxed to support his large family, was given first the province of New York and then the vineyard of Massachusetts. Robert Hunter, who had fought at Blenheim and commanded the "ready art of procuring money," was allowed to labor in New York and New Jersey. John Montgomerie, after serving in the royal army and then the bedchamber division of the king's household, was sent to the same domain to enlarge his inheritance. Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, though grave and learned, concealed under his cool exterior a passion for money; his sons were deep in the Boston tea business; his private letters teem with references to prices and qualities.
In a paper presented to the board of trade as early as 1715, an observer at the center of things and in a position to know, rendered an opinion to the effect that the colonial offices were "sometimes given as a reward for services done to the crown and with the design that such persons shall thereby make their fortunes. But they are generally obtained by the favor of great men to some of their dependents or relatives and they have sometimes been given to persons who were obliged to divide the profits of them with those by whose means they were procured." To the victors belonged the spoils, and the assembly of New York had authority for declaring that the governors seldom had any regard for the welfare of the people, made it subservient to their own particular interest, and, knowing that their time in office was limited, made haste to employ all the engines calculated "to raise estates to themselves."
It is not necessary to say with Bancroft that America was "the hospital of Great Britain for its decayed members of Parliament and abandoned courtiers," but in seeking for the roots of the controversy that split the British empire we cannot ignore the strife over the profits of office and the symbols of power—a struggle as old as the politics of Rome and as new as the latest election.
In the train of the English executive came a horde of
