that resolution, when the consequence of it must have been the
breaking my party and the distress of the public affairs. I thought
my mistress treated me ill, but the sense of that duty which I owed
her came in aid of other considerations, and prevailed over my
resentment. These sentiments, indeed, are so much out of fashion
that a man who avows them is in danger of passing for a bubble in
the world; yet they were, in the conjuncture I speak of, the true
motives of my conduct, and you saw me go on as cheerfully in the
troublesome and dangerous work assigned me as if I had been under
the utmost satisfaction. I began, indeed, in my heart to renounce
the friendship which till that time I had preserved inviolable for
Oxford. I was not aware of all his treachery, nor of the base and
little means which he employed then, and continued to employ
afterwards, to ruin me in the opinion of the Queen and everywhere
else. I saw, however, that he had no friendship for anybody, and
that with respect to me, instead of having the ability to render
that merit, which I endeavoured to acquire, an addition of strength
to himself, it became the object of his jealousy and a reason for
undermining me. In this temper of mind I went on till the great
work of the peace was consummated and the treaty signed at Utrecht;
after which a new and more melancholy scene for the party, as well
as for me, opened itself.

I am far from thinking the treaties, or the negotiations which led
to them, exempt from faults. Many were made no doubt in both by
those who were concerned in them; by myself in the first place, and
many were owing purely to the opposition they met with in every step
of their progress. I never look back on this great event, passed as
it is, without a secret emotion of mind; when I compare the vastness
of the undertaking and the importance of its success, with the means