fix public credit on deep and solid foundations.

The difficulties of the King's situation are to be, in part at
least, attributed to an error which he had committed in the
preceding spring. The Gazette which announced that Sunderland been
appointed Chamberlain of the Royal Household, sworn of the Privy
Council, and named one of the Lords Justices who were to
administer the government during the summer had caused great
uneasiness among plain men who remembered all the windings and
doublings of his long career. In truth, his countrymen were unjust
to him. For they thought him, not only an unprincipled and
faithless politician, which he was, but a deadly enemy of the
liberties of the nation, which he was not. What he wanted was
simply to be safe, rich and great. To these objects he had been
constant through all the vicissitudes of his life. For these
objects he had passed from Church to Church and from faction to
faction, had joined the most turbulent of oppositions without any
zeal for freedom, and had served the most arbitrary of monarchs
without any zeal for monarchy; had voted for the Exclusion Bill
without being a Protestant, and had adored the Host without being
a Papist; had sold his country at once to both the great parties
which divided the Continent; had taken money from France, and had
sent intelligence to Holland. As far, however, as he could be said
to have any opinions, his opinions were Whiggish. Since his return
from exile, his influence had been generally exerted in favour of
the Whig party. It was by his counsel that the Great Seal had been
entrusted to Somers, that Nottingham had been sacrificed to
Russell, and that Montague had been preferred to Fox. It was by
his dexterous management that the Princess Anne had been detached
from the opposition, and that Godolphin had been removed from the