In his secret paper, ‘A Brief Discourse Concerning the Nature and Reason of Intelligence’, written during the course of the reign of William III, Sir Samuel Morland, who had served the regimes of both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II in the secret dealings of government, attempted to capture the rationale and philosophy behind the Restoration regime's intelligence system. The foundation of the philosophy which Morland outlined was clarity itself. His view was that all mankind possessed a fallen nature and thus was unable to be held to anything in political life if his vital interests, his survival and need for power, were threatened, Morland's political man was ‘governed wholly by politick maxims’ and while this was most visible in the relations between nation-states such tendencies were equally visible in the relationship between government and people. In such relationships the sanctions laid down by religion had little effect, for men merely paid lip service to keeping the ‘most sacred promise[s] & solemn agreements’, which were as ‘easily broke[n] as Sampson's cords’. In such a philosophy nothing could be ruled out that gave an advantage to ‘political man’. As the ruler mistrusted his neighbour in international politics so he should also mistrust his own people. Given this situation it was beholden upon the ruler to discover and assess the ‘tempers of his own subjects’ as well as ‘the first ferments of all factions; in order to manage the ‘lopping men of so many different parties & the Heroes of the populace’.