convinced of his perfidy, so jaded with his yoke, or so much piqued
personally against him as I was; and yet if he would have exerted
himself in concert with us to improve the few advantages which were
left us and to ward off the visible danger which threatened our
persons and our party, I would have stifled my private animosity and
would have acted under him with as much zeal as ever. But he was
incapable of taking such a turn. The sum of all his policy had been
to amuse the Whigs, the Tories, and the Jacobites as long as he
could, and to keep his power as long as he amused them. When it
became impossible to amuse mankind any longer, he appeared plainly
at the end of his line.

By a secret correspondence with the late Earl of Halifax, and by the
intrigues of his brother and other fanatical relations, he had
endeavoured to keep some hold on the Whigs.

The Tories were attached to him at first by the heat of a revolution
in the Ministry, by their hatred of the people who were discarded,
and by the fond hopes which it is easy to give at the setting out of
a new administration. Afterwards he held out the peace in prospect
to them and to the Jacobites separately, as an event which must be
brought about before he could effectually serve either. You cannot
have forgot how things which we pressed were put off upon every
occasion till the peace; the peace was to be the date of a new
administration, and the period at which the millenary year of
Toryism should begin. Thus were the Tories at that time amused; and
since my exile I have had the opportunity of knowing certainly and
circumstantially that the Jacobites were treated in the same manner,
and that the Pretender was made, through the French Minister, to
expect that measures should be taken for his restoration as soon as