This was nothing less than to give notice to every man who should ever be employed in any similar inquiry that, if he wished to be paid, he must report what would please the assembly which held the purse of the state.

In truth the House was despotic, and was fast contracting the vices of a despot.

It was proud of its antipathy to courtiers; and it was calling into existence a new set of courtiers who would study all its humours, who would flatter all its weaknesses, who would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would assuredly be, in no respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less abject than the sycophants who bow in the antechambers of kings.
Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend than that of being left unremunerated.

One of them, Sir Richard Levinz, had mentioned in private to his friends some disrespectful expressions which had been used by one of his colleagues about the King.

What he had mentioned in private was, not perhaps very discreetly, repeated by Montague in the House.