There is, perhaps, no parallel in history, ancient or modern, to the authority exercised by this council, during twenty troubled years, over the Whig body.

The men who acquired that authority in the days of William and Mary continued to possess it, without interruption, in office and out of office, till George the First was on the throne.
One of these men was Russell.

Of his shameful dealings with the Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for doubt.

But no such proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years dead.
If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; they rested on no evidence; they could be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite calumnies.

What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which had done and suffered great things for liberty and for the Protestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, that he had landed with the Deliverer at Torbay, that he had in Parliament, on all occasions, spoken and voted as a zealous Whig, that he had won a great victory, that he had saved his country from an invasion, and that, since he had left the Admiralty, every thing had gone wrong.