It was founded by plundering expeditions, and its subsequent existence was tainted by the baseness of this predatory origin.

She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons of the leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her confused thoughts were centered on one subject--the irrevocability of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not suspected, but which had shown itself during her father's illness.

Whatever worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:

The whole comedy is a study of stupidity and baseness acted on by roguery.

The treaty of Breda with Holland (21st of July 1667) removed the danger, but not the ignominy, and Charles showed the real baseness of his character when he joined in the popular outcry against Clarendon, the upright and devoted adherent of his father and himself during twenty-five years of misfortune, and drove him into poverty and exile in his old age, recalling ominously Charles I.'s betrayal of Strafford.