The vices which had brought that great humiliation on the country had ever since been rooting themselves deeper and spreading themselves wider.

James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of the gross abuses which disgraced the naval administration.

Yet the naval administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved the contempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France and Holland.

The military administration was still worse.

The courtiers took bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated the soldiers: the commissaries sent in long bills for what had never been furnished: the keepers of the arsenals sold the public stores and pocketed the price.
But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and grown to maturity under the government of Charles and James, first made themselves severely felt under the government of William.