Chapter IV: Part 4

These lies, and many others of the same sort, which were founded on particular facts, were disproved by particular facts, and had not time—at least at Paris—to make any impression. But the principal crime with which they charged me then, and the only one which since that time they have insisted upon, is of another nature. This part of their accusation is general, and it cannot be refuted without doing what I have done above, deducing several facts, comparing these facts together, and reasoning upon them; nay, that which is worse is, that it cannot be fully refuted without the mention of some facts which, in my present circumstances, it would not be very prudent, though I should think it very lawful, for me to divulge. You see that I mean the starving the war in Scotland, which it is pretended might have been supported, and might have succeeded, too, if I had procured the succours which were asked—nay, if I had sent a little powder. This the Jacobites who affect moderation and candour shrug their shoulders at: they are sorry for it, but Lord Bolingbroke can never wash himself clean of this guilt; for these succours might have been obtained, and a proof that they might is that they were so by others. These people leave the cause of this mismanagement doubtful between my treachery and my want of capacity. The Pretender, with all the false charity and real malice of one who sets up for devotion, attributes all his misfortunes to my negligence.

The letters which were written by my secretary, above a year ago, into England; the marginal notes which have been made since to the letter from Avignon; and what is said above, have set this affair in so clear a light, that whoever examines, with a fair intention, must feel the truth, and be convinced by it. I cannot, however, forbear to make some observations on the same subject here. It is even necessary that I should do so, in the design of making this discourse the foundation of my justification to the Tories at present, and to the whole world in time.

There is nothing which my enemies apprehend so much as my justification: and they have reason. But they may comfort themselves with this reflection—that it will be a misfortune which will accompany me to my grave, that I suffered a chain of accidents to draw me into such measures and such company; that I have been obliged to defend myself against such accusations and such accusers; that by associating with so much folly and so much knavery I am become the victim of both; that I was distressed by the former, when the latter would have been less grievous to me, since it is much better in business to be yoked to knaves than fools; and that I put into their hands the means of loading me, like the scape-goat, with all the evil consequences of their folly.

In the first letters which I received from the Earl of Mar he wrote for arms, for ammunition, for money, for officers, and all things frankly, as if these things had been ready, and I had engaged to supply him with them, before he set up the standard at the Brae of Mar; whereas our condition could not be unknown to his lordship; and you have seen that I did all I could to prevent his reckoning on any assistance from hence. As our hopes at this Court decreased, his lordship rose in his demands; and at the time when it was visible that the Regent intended nothing less than even privately and indirectly to support the Scotch, the Pretender and the Earl of Mar wrote for regular forces and a train of artillery, which was in effect to insist that France should enter into a war for them. I might, in answer to the first instances, have asked Lord Mar what he did in Scotland, and what he meant by drawing his countrymen into a war at this time, or at least upon this foot? He who had dictated not long before a memorial wherein it was asserted that to have a prospect of succeeding in this enterprise there must be a universal insurrection, and that such an insurrection was in no sort probable, unless a body of troops was brought to support it? He who thought that the consequence of failing, when the attempt was once made, must be the utter ruin of the cause and the loss of the British liberty? He who concurred in demanding as a _pis-aller_, and the least which could be insisted on, arms, ammunition, artillery, money, and officers? I say, I might have asked what he meant to begin the dance when he had not the least assurance of any succour, but, on the contrary, the greatest reason imaginable to believe this affair was become as desperate abroad by the death of the most Christian King as it was at home by the discovery of the design and by the measures taken to defeat it?

Instead of acting this part, which would have been wise, I took that which was plausible. I resolved to contribute all I could to support the business, since it was begun. I encouraged his lordship as long as I had the least ground for doing so, and I confirmed the Pretender in his resolution of going to Scotland when he had nothing better left him to do. If I have anything to reproach myself with in the whole progress of the war in Scotland, it is having encouraged Lord Mar too long. But, on the other hand, if I had given up the cause, and had written despondingly to him before this Court had explained itself as fully as the Marshal d’Huxelles did in the conversation which is mentioned above, it is easy to see what turn would have been given to such a conduct.

The true cause of all the misfortunes which happened to the Scotch and to those who took arms in the North of England lies here—that they rose without any previous certainty of foreign help, in direct contradiction to the scheme which their leaders themselves had formed. The excuse which I have heard made for this is that the Act of Parliament for curbing the Highlanders was near to be put in execution; that they would have been disarmed, and entirely disabled from rising at any other time, if they had not rose at this. You can judge better than I of the validity of this excuse. It seems to me that by management they might have gained time, and that even when they had been reduced to the dilemma supposed, they ought to have got together under pretence of resisting the infractions of the Union without any mention of the Pretender, and have treated with the Government on this foot. By these means they might probably have preserved themselves in a condition of avowing their design when they should be sure of being backed from abroad. At the worst, they might have declared for the Chevalier when all other expedients failed them. In a word, I take this excuse not to be very good, and the true reason of this conduct to have been the rashness of the people and the inconsistent measures of their head.

But admitting the excuse to be valid, it remains still an undeniable truth that this is the original fountain from whence all those waters of bitterness flowed which so many unhappy people have drunk of. I have said already that the necessity of acting was precipitated before any measures to act with success had been taken, and that the necessity of doing so seemed to increase as the means of doing so were taken away. To whom is this to be ascribed? Is it to be ascribed to me, who had no share in these affairs till a few weeks before the Duke of Ormond was forced to abandon England, and the discovery of the intended invasion was published to Parliament and to the world? or is it to be ascribed to those who had from the first been at the head of this undertaking?

Unable to defend this point, the next resort of the Jacobites is to this impudent and absurd affirmation—that, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which they took arms, they should have succeeded if the indirect assistances which were asked from France had been obtained. Nay, that they should have been able to defend the Highlands if I had sent them a little powder. Is it possible that a man should be wounded with such blunt weapons? Much more than powder was asked for from the first, and I have already said that when the Chevalier came into Scotland, regular troops, artillery, etc., were demanded. Both he and the Earl of Mar judged it impossible to stand their ground without such assistance as these. How scandalous, then, must it be deemed that they suffer their dependents to spread in the world that for want of a little powder I forced them to abandon Scotland! The Earl of Mar knows that all the powder in France would not have enabled him to stay at Perth as long as he did if he had not had another security. And when that failed him, he must have quitted the party, if the Regent had given us all that he made some of us expect.

But to finish all that I intend to say on a subject which has tired me, and perhaps you; the Jacobites affirm that the indirect assistances which they desired, might have been obtained; and I confess that I am inexcusable if this fact be true. To prove it, they appeal to the little politicians of whom I have spoken so often. I affirm, on the contrary, that nothing could be obtained here to support the Scotch or to encourage the English. To prove the assertion, I appeal to the Ministers with whom I negotiated, and to the Regent himself, who, whatever language he may hold in private with other people, cannot controvert with me the truth of what I advance. He excluded me formerly, that he might the more easily avoid doing anything; and perhaps he has blamed me since, that he might excuse his doing nothing. All this may be true, and yet it will remain true that he would never have been prevailed upon to act directly against his interest in the only point of view which he has—I mean, the crown of France—and against the unanimous sense of all his Ministers. Suppose that in the time of the late Queen, when she had the peace in view, a party in France had implored her assistance, and had applied to Margery Fielding, to Israel, to my Lady Oglethorpe, to Dr. Battle, and Lieutenant-General Stewart, what success do you imagine such applications would have had? The Queen would have spoke them fair—she would speak otherwise to nobody; but do you imagine she would have made one step in their favour? Olive Trant, Magny, Mademoiselle Chaussery, a dirty Abbé Brigault, and Mr. Dillon, are characters very apposite to these. And what I suppose to have passed in England is not a whit more ridiculous than what really passed here.

I say nothing of the ships which the Jacobites pretend that they sent into Scotland three weeks or a month after the Pretender was returned. I believe they might have had my Lord Stair’s connivance then, as well as the Regent’s. I say nothing of the order which they pretend to have obtained, and which I never saw, for the stores that were seized at Havre to be delivered to Castel Blanco. I have already said enough on this head, and you cannot have failed to observe that this signal favour was never obtained by these people till the Marshal d’Huxelles had owned to me that nothing was to be expected from France, and that the only thing which I could do was to endeavour to bring the Pretender, the Earl of Mar, and the principal persons who were most exposed, off, neither he nor I imagining that any such would be left behind.

When I began to appear in the world, upon the advertisements which my friends gave me of the clamour that was raised against me, you will easily think I did not enter into so many particulars as I have done with you. I said even less than you have seen in those letters which Brinsden wrote into England in March and April was twelvemonth, and yet the clamour sank immediately. The people of consideration at this Court beat it down, and the Court of St. Germains grew so ashamed of it that the Queen thought fit to purge herself of having had any share in encouraging the discourses which were held against me, or having been so much as let into the secret of the measure which preceded them. The provocation was great, but I resolved to act without passion. I saw the advantage the Pretender and his council, who disposed of things better for me than I should have done for myself, had given me; but I saw likewise that I must improve this advantage with the utmost caution.

As I never imagined that he would treat me in the manner he did, nor that his Ministers could be weak enough to advise him to it, I had resolved, on his return from Scotland, to follow him till his residence should be fixed somewhere or other. After which, having served the Tories in this which I looked upon as their last struggle for power, and having continued to act in the Pretender’s affairs till the end of the term for which I embarked with him, I should have esteemed myself to be at liberty, and should in the civillest manner I was able have taken my leave of him. Had we parted thus, I should have remained in a very strange situation during the rest of my life; but I had examined myself thoroughly, I was determined, I was prepared.

On one side he would have thought that he had a sort of right on any future occasion to call me out of my retreat; the Tories would probably have thought the same thing: my resolution was taken to refuse them both, and I foresaw that both would condemn me. On the other side, the consideration of his keeping measures with me, joined to that of having once openly declared for him, would have created a point of honour by which I should have been tied down, not only from ever engaging against him, but also from making my peace at home. The Chevalier cut this gordian knot asunder at one blow. He broke the links of that chain which former engagements had fastened on me, and gave me a right to esteem myself as free from all obligations of keeping measures with him as I should have continued if I had never engaged in his interest. I took therefore, from that moment, the resolution of making my peace at home, and of employing all the unfortunate experience I had acquired abroad to undeceive my friends and to promote the union and the quiet of my country.

The Earl of Stair had received a full power to treat with me whilst I was engaged with the Pretender, as I have been since informed. He had done me the justice to believe me incapable to hearken, in such circumstances, to any proposals of that kind; and as much friendship as he had for me, as much as I had for him, we entertained not the least even indirect correspondence together during that whole time. Soon afterwards he employed a person to communicate to me the disposition of his Majesty to grant me my pardon, and his own desire to give me, on this occasion, all the proofs he could of his inclination in my favour. I embraced the offer, as it became me to do, with all possible sense of the King’s goodness, and of his lordship’s friendship. We met, we talked together, and he wrote to the Court on the subject. The turn which the Ministers gave to this matter was, to enter into a treaty to reverse my attainder, and to stipulate the conditions on which this act of grace should be granted me.

The notion of a treaty shocked me. I resolved never to be restored rather than go that way to work; and I opened myself without any reserve to Lord Stair. I told him that I looked on myself to be obliged in honour and in conscience to undeceive my friends in England, both as to the state of foreign affairs, as to the management of the Jacobite interest abroad, and as to the characters of persons—in every one of which points I knew them to be most grossly and most dangerously deluded; that the treatment I had received from the Pretender and his adherents would justify me to the world in doing this; that if I remained in exile all my life, he might be assured that I would never more have to do with the Jacobite cause; and that if I was restored, I should give it an effectual blow, in making that apology which the Pretender has put me under a necessity of making: that in doing this I flattered myself that I should contribute something to the establishment of the King’s Government, and to the union of his subjects; but that this was all the merit which I could promise to have; that if the Court believed these professions to be sincere, a treaty with me was unnecessary for them; and that if they did not believe them so, a treaty with them was dangerous for me; that I was determined in this whole transaction to make no one step which I would not own in the face of the world; that in other circumstances it might be sufficient to act honestly, but that in a case as extraordinary as mine it was necessary to act clearly, and to leave no room for the least doubtful construction.

The Earl of Stair, as well as Mr. Craggs, who arrived soon after in France, came into my sense. I have reason to believe that the King has approved it likewise upon their representations, since he has been pleased to give me the most gracious assurances of his favour. What the effect of all this may be in the next or in any other Session, I know not; but this is the foot on which I have put myself, and on which I stand at the moment I write to you. The Whigs may continue inveterate, and by consequence frustrate his Majesty’s good intentions towards me; the Tories may continue to rail at me, on the credit of such enemies as I have described to you in the course of this relation: neither the one nor the other shall make me swerve out of the path which I have traced to myself.

I have now led you through the several stages which I proposed at first; and I should do wrong to your good understanding, as well as to our mutual friendship, if I suspected that you could hold any other language to me than that which Dolabella uses to Cicero: “Satisfactum est jam a te vel officio vel familiaritati; satisfactum etiam partibus.” The King, who pardons me, might complain of me; the Whigs might declaim against me; my family might reproach me for the little regard which I have shown to my own and to their interests; but where is the crime I have been guilty of towards my party and towards my friends? In what part of my conduct will the Tories find an excuse for the treatment which they have given me? As Tories such as they were when I left England, I defy them to find any. But here lies the sore, and, tender as it is, I must lay it open. Those amongst them who rail at me now are changed from what they were, or from what they professed themselves to be, when we lived and acted together. They were Tories then; they are Jacobites now. Their objections to the course of my conduct whilst I was in the Pretender’s interest are the pretence; the true reason of their anger is, that I renounce the Pretender for my life. When you were first driven into this interest, I may appeal to you for the notion which the party had. You thought of restoring him by the strength of the Tories, and of opposing a Tory king to a Whig king. You took him up as the instrument of your revenge and of your ambition. You looked on him as your creature, and never once doubted of making what terms you pleased with him. This is so true that the same language is still held to the catechumens in Jacobitism. Were the contrary to be avowed even now, the party in England would soon diminish. I engaged on this principle when your orders sent me to Commercy, and I never acted on any other. This ought to have been part of my merit towards the Tories; and it would have been so if they had continued in the same dispositions. But they are changed, and this very thing is become my crime. Instead of making the Pretender their tool, they are his. Instead of having in view to restore him on their own terms, they are labouring to do it without any terms; that is, to speak properly, they are ready to receive him on his. Be not deceived: there is not a man on this side of the water who acts in any other manner. The Church of England Jacobite and the Irish Papist seem in every respect to have the same cause. Those on your side of the water who correspond with these are to be comprehended in the same class; and from hence it is that the clamour raised against me has been kept up with so much industry, and is redoubled on the least appearance of my return home, and of my being in a situation to justify myself.

You have seen already what reasons the Pretender, and the several sorts of people who compose his party here, had to get rid of me, and to cover me to the utmost of their power with infamy. Their views were as short in this case as they are in all others. They did not see at first that this conduct would not only give me a right, but put me under a necessity of keeping no farther measures with them, and of laying the whole mystery of their iniquity open. As soon as they discovered this, they took the only course which was left them—that of poisoning the minds of the Tories, and of creating such prejudices against me whilst I remained in a condition of not speaking for myself, as will they hope prevent the effect of whatever I may say when I am in a condition of pleading my own cause. The bare apprehension that I shall show the world that I have been guilty of no crime renders me criminal among these men; and they hold themselves ready, being unable to reply either in point of fact or in point of reason, to drown my voice in the confusion of their clamour.

The only crimes I am guilty of, I own. I own the crime of having been for the Pretender in a very different manner from those with whom I acted. I served him as faithfully, I served him as well as they; but I served him on a different principle. I own the crime of having renounced him, and of being resolved never to have to do with him as long as I live. I own the crime of being determined sooner or later, as soon as I can, to clear myself of all the unjust aspersions which have been cast upon me; to undeceive by my experience as many as I can of those Tories who may have been drawn into error; and to contribute, if ever I return home, as far as I am able, to promote the national good of Britain without any other regard. These crimes do not, I hope, by this time appear to you to be of a very black dye. You may come, perhaps, to think them virtues, when you have read and considered what remains to be said; for before I conclude, it is necessary that I open one matter to you which I could not weave in sooner without breaking too much the thread of my narration. In this place, unmingled with anything else, it will have, as it deserves to have, your whole attention.

Whoever composed that curious piece of false fact, false argument, false English, and false eloquence, the letter from Avignon, says that I was not thought the most proper person to speak about religion. I confess I should be of his mind, and should include his patrons in my case, if the practice of it was to be recommended; for surely it is unpardonable impudence to impose by precept what we do not teach by example. I should be of the same mind, if the nature of religion was to be explained, if its mysteries were to be fathomed, and if this great truth was to be established—that the Church of England has the advantage over all other Churches in purity of doctrine, and in wisdom of discipline. But nothing of this kind was necessary. This would have been the task of reverend and learned divines. We of the laity had nothing more to do than to lay in our claim that we could never submit to be governed by a Prince who was not of the religion of our country. Such a declaration could hardly have failed of some effect towards opening the eyes and disposing the mind even of the Pretender. At least, in justice to ourselves, and in justice to our party, we who were here ought to have made it; and the influence of it on the Pretender ought to have become the rule of our subsequent conduct.

In thinking in this manner I think no otherwise now than I have always thought; and I cannot forget, nor you neither, what passed when, a little before the death of the Queen, letters were conveyed from the Chevalier to several persons—to myself among others. In the letter to me the article of religion was so awkwardly handled that he made the principal motive of the confidence we ought to have in him to consist in his firm resolution to adhere to Popery. The effect which this epistle had on me was the same which it had on those Tories to whom I communicated it at that time; it made us resolve to have nothing to do with him.

Some time after this I was assured by several, and I make no doubt but others have been so too, that the Chevalier at the bottom was not a bigot; that whilst he remained abroad and could expect no succour, either present or future, from any Princes but those of the Roman Catholic Communion, it was prudent, whatever he might think, to make no demonstration of a design to change; but that his temper was such, and he was already so disposed, that we might depend on his compliance with what should be desired of him if ever he came amongst us, and was taken from under the wing of the Queen his mother. To strengthen this opinion of his character, it was said that he had sent for Mr. Leslie over; that he allowed him to celebrate the Church of England service in his family; and that he had promised to hear what this divine should represent on the subject of religion to him. When I came abroad, the same things, and much more, were at first insinuated to me; and I began to let them make impression upon me, notwithstanding what I had seen under his hand. I would willingly flatter myself that this impression disposed me to incline to Jacobitism rather than allow that the inclination to Jacobitism disposed me easily to believe what, upon that principle, I had so much reason to wish might be true. Which was the cause, and which the effect, I cannot well determine: perhaps they did mutually occasion each other. Thus much is certain—that I was far from weighing this matter as I ought to have done when the solicitation of my friends and the persecution of my enemies precipitated me into engagements with the Pretender.

I was willing to take it for granted that since you were as ready to declare as I believed you at that time, you must have had entire satisfaction on the article of religion. I was soon undeceived; this string had never been touched. My own observation, and the unanimous report of all those who from his infancy have approached the Pretender’s person, soon taught me how difficult it is to come to terms with him on this head, and how unsafe to embark without them.

His religion is not founded on the love of virtue and the detestation of vice; on a sense of that obedience which is due to the will of the Supreme Being, and a sense of those obligations which creatures formed to live in a mutual dependence on one another lie under. The spring of his whole conduct is fear. Fear of the horns of the devil and of the flames of hell. He has been taught to believe that nothing but a blind submission to the Church of Rome and a strict adherence to all the terms of that communion can save him from these dangers. He has all the superstition of a Capuchin, but I found on him no tincture of the religion of a prince. Do not imagine that I loose the reins to my imagination, or that I write what my resentments dictate: I tell you simply my opinion. I have heard the same description of his character made by those who know him best, and I conversed with very few among the Roman Catholics themselves who did not think him too much a Papist.

Nothing gave me from the beginning so much uneasiness as the consideration of this part of his character, and of the little care which had been taken to correct it. A true turn had not been given to the first steps which were made with him. The Tories who engaged afterwards, threw themselves, as it were, at his head. He had been suffered to think that the party in England wanted him as much as he wanted them. There was no room to hope for much compliance on the head of religion when he was in these sentiments, and when he thought the Tories too far advanced to have it in their power to retreat; and little dependence was at any time to be placed on the promises of a man capable of thinking his damnation attached to the observance, and his salvation to the breach, of these very promises. Something, however, was to be done, and I thought that the least which could be done was to deal plainly with him, and to show him the impossibility of governing our nation by any other expedient than by complying with that which would be expected from him as to his religion. This was thought too much by the Duke of Ormond and Mr. Leslie; although the duke could be no more ignorant than the minister how ill the latter had been used, how far the Chevalier had been from keeping the word which he had given, and on the faith of which Mr. Leslie had come over to him. They both knew that he not only refused to hear himself, but that he sheltered the ignorance of his priests, or the badness of his cause, or both, behind his authority, and absolutely forbade all discourse concerning religion. The duke seemed convinced that it would be time enough to talk of religion to him when he should be restored, or, at soonest, when he should be landed in England; that the influence under which he had lived being at a distance, the reasonableness of what we might propose, joined to the apparent necessity which would then stare him in the face, could not fail to produce all the effects which we could desire.

To me this whole reasoning appeared fallacious. Our business was not to make him change appearances on this side of the water, but to prepare him to give those which would be necessary on the other; and there was no room to hope that if we could gain nothing on his prejudices here, we should be able to overcome them in Britain. I would have argued just as the Duke of Ormond and Leslie if I had been a Papist; and I saw well enough that some people about him, for in a great dearth of ability there was cunning to be met with, affected nothing more than to keep off all discourse of religion. To my apprehension it was exceeding plain that we should find, if we were once in England, the necessity of going forward at any rate with him much greater than he would find that of complying with us. I thought it an unpardonable fault to have taken a formal engagement with him, when no previous satisfaction had been obtained on a point at least as essential to our civil as to our religious rights; to the peace of the State as to the prosperity of the Church; and I looked on this fault to be aggravated by every day’s delay. Our silence was unfair both to the Chevalier and to our friends in England. He was induced by it to believe that they would exact far less from him than we knew they expected, and they were confirmed in an opinion of his docility, which we knew to be void of all foundation. The pretence of removing that influence under which he had lived was frivolous, and should never have been urged to me, who saw plainly that, according to the measures pursued by the very persons who urged it, he must be environed in England by the same people that surrounded him here; and that the Court of St. James’s would be constituted, if ever he was restored, in the same manner as that of St. Germains was.

When the draft of a declaration and other papers which were to be dispersed in Great Britain came to be settled, it appeared that my apprehension and distrust were but too well founded. The Pretender took exception against several passages, and particularly against those wherein a direct promise of securing the Churches of England and Ireland was made. He was told, he said, that he could not in conscience make such a promise, and, the debate being kept up a little while, he asked me with some warmth why the Tories were so desirous to have him if they expected those things from him which his religion did not allow. I left these drafts, by his order, with him, that he might consider and amend them. I cannot say that he sent them to the Queen to be corrected by her confessor and the rest of her council, but I firmly believe it. Sure I am that he took time sufficient to do this before he sent them from Bar, where he then was, to Paris, whither I was returned. When they were digested in such a manner as satisfied his casuists he made them be printed, and my name was put to the declaration, as if the original had been signed by me. I had hitherto submitted my opinion to the judgment of others, but on this occasion I took advice from myself. I declared to him that I would not suffer my name to be at the bottom of this paper. All the copies which came to my hands I burnt, and another was printed off without any countersigning.

The whole tenor of the amendments was one continued instance of the grossest bigotry, and the most material passages were turned with all the Jesuitical prevarication imaginable. As much as it was his interest at that time to cultivate the respect which many of the Tories really had for the memory of the late Queen, and which many others affected as a farther mark of their opposition to the Court and to the Whig party; as much as it was his interest to weave the honour of her name into his cause, and to render her, even after her death, a party to the dispute, he could not be prevailed upon to give her that character which her enemies allowed her, nor to make use of those expressions, in speaking of her, which, by the general manner of their application, are come to be little more than terms of respect and words of form proper in the style of public acts. For instance:—

She was called in the original draft “his sister of glorious and blessed memory.” In that which he published, the epithet of “blessed” was left out. Her eminent justice and her exemplary piety were occasionally mentioned; in lieu of which he substituted a flat, and, in this case, an invidious expression, “her inclinations to justice.”

Not content with declaring her neither just nor pious in this world he did little less than declare her damned in the other, according to the charitable principles of the Church of Rome.

“When it pleased Almighty God to take her to Himself,” was the expression used in speaking of the death of the Queen. This he erased, and instead thereof inserted these words: “When it pleased Almighty God to put a period to her life.”

He graciously allowed the Universities to be nurseries of loyalty; but did not think that it became him to style them “nurseries of religion.”

Since his father passes already for a saint, and since reports are encouraged of miracles which they suppose to be wrought at his tomb, he might have allowed his grandfather to pass for a martyr; but he struck out of the draft these words, “that blessed martyr who died for his people,” which were applied to King Charles I., and would say nothing more of him than that “he fell a sacrifice to rebellion.”

In the clause which related to the Churches of England and Ireland there was a plain and direct promise inserted of “effectual provision for their security, and for their re-establishment in all those rights which belong to them.” This clause was not suffered to stand, but another was formed, wherein all mention of the Church of Ireland was omitted, and nothing was promised to the Church of England but the security, and “re-establishment of all those rights, privileges, immunities, and possessions which belong to her,” and wherein he had already promised by his declaration of the 20th of July, to secure and “protect all her members.”

I need make no comment on a proceeding so easy to be understood. The drift of these evasions, and of this affected obscurity, is obvious enough—at least, it will appear so by the observations which remain to be made.

He was so afraid of admitting any words which might be construed into a promise of his consenting to those things which should be found necessary for the present or future security of our constitution, that in a paragraph where he was made to say that he thought himself obliged to be solicitous for the prosperity of the Church of England, the word prosperity was expunged, and we were left by this mental reservation to guess what he was solicitous for. It could not be for her prosperity: that he had expunged. It must therefore be for her destruction, which in his language would have been styled her conversion.

Another remarkable proof of the same kind is to be found towards the conclusion of the declaration. After having spoken of the peace and flourishing estate of the kingdom, he was made to express his readiness to concert with the two Houses such further measures as should be thought necessary for securing the same to future generations. The design of this paragraph you see. He and his council saw it too, and therefore the word “securing” was laid aside, and the word “leaving” was inserted in lieu of it.

One would imagine that a declaration corrected in this manner might have been suffered to go abroad without any farther precaution. But these papers had been penned by Protestants; and who could answer that there might not be still ground sufficient from the tenor of them to insist on everything necessary for the security of that religion? The declaration of the 20th of July had been penned by a priest of the Scotch college, and the expressions had been measured so as to suit perfectly with the conduct which the Chevalier intended to hold; so as to leave room to distinguish him, upon future occasions, with the help of a little pious sophistry, out of all the engagements which he seemed to take in it. This orthodox paper was therefore to accompany the heretical paper into the world, and no promise of moment was to stand in the latter, unless qualified by a reference to the former. Thus the Church was to be secured in the rights, etc., which belong to her. How? No otherwise than according to the declaration of the month of July. And what does that promise? Security and protection to the members of this Church in the enjoyment of their property. I make no doubt but Bellarmine, if he had been the Chevalier’s confessor, would have passed this paragraph thus amended. No engagement whatever taken in favour of the Church of Ireland, and a happy distinction found between securing that of England, and protecting her members. Many a useful project for the destruction of heretics, and for accumulating power and riches to the See of Rome, has been established on a more slender foundation.

The same spirit reigns through the whole. Civil and religious rights are no otherwise to be confirmed than in conformity to the declaration of July; nay, the general pardon is restrained and limited to the terms prescribed therein.

This is the account which I judged too important to be omitted, and which I chose to give you all together. I shall surely be justified at present in concluding that the Tories are grossly deluded in their opinion of this Prince’s character, or else that they sacrifice all which ought to be esteemed precious and sacred among men to their passions. In both these cases I remain still a Tory, and am true to the party. In the first, I endeavour to undeceive you by an experience purchased at my expense and for your sakes: in the second, I endeavour to prevail on you to revert to that principle from which we have deviated. You never intended, whilst I lived amongst you, the ruin of your country; and yet every step which you now make towards the restoration you are so fond of, is a step towards this ruin. No man of sense, well informed, can ever go into measures for it, unless he thinks himself and his country in such desperate circumstances that nothing is left them but to choose of two ruins that which they like best.

The exile of the royal family, under Cromwell’s usurpation, was the principal cause of all those misfortunes in which Britain has been involved, as well as of many of those which have happened to the rest of Europe, during more than half a century.

The two brothers, Charles and James, became then infected with Popery to such degrees as their different characters admitted of. Charles had parts, and his good understanding served as an antidote to repel the poison. James, the simplest man of his time, drank off the whole chalice. The poison met in his composition with all the fear, all the credulity, and all the obstinacy of temper proper to increase its virulence and to strengthen its effect. The first had always a wrong bias upon him; he connived at the establishment, and indirectly contributed to the growth, of that power which afterwards disturbed the peace and threatened the liberty of Europe so often; but he went no further out of the way. The opposition of his Parliaments and his own reflections stopped him here. The Prince and the people were, indeed, mutually jealous of one another, from whence much present disorder flowed, and the foundation of future evils was laid; but his good and his bad principles combating still together, he maintained, during a reign of more than twenty years, in some tolerable degree, the authority of the Crown and the flourishing estate of the nation. The last, drunk with superstitious and even enthusiastic zeal, ran headlong into his own ruin whilst he endeavoured to precipitate ours. His Parliament and his people did all they could to save themselves by winning him. But all was vain; he had no principle on which they could take hold. Even his good qualities worked against them, and his love of his country went halves with his bigotry. How he succeeded we have heard from our fathers. The revolution of 1688 saved the nation and ruined the King.

Now the Pretender’s education has rendered him infinitely less fit than his uncle—and at least as unfit as his father—to be King of Great Britain. Add to this that there is no resource in his understanding. Men of the best sense find it hard to overcome religious prejudices, which are of all the strongest; but he is a slave to the weakest. The rod hangs like the sword of Damocles over his head, and he trembles before his mother and his priest. What, in the name of God, can any member of the Church of England promise himself from such a character? Are we by another revolution to return into the same state from which we were delivered by the first? Let us take example from the Roman Catholics, who act very reasonably in refusing to submit to a Protestant Prince. Henry IV. had at least as good a title to the crown of France as the Pretender has to ours. His religion alone stood in his way, and he had never been King if he had not removed that obstacle. Shall we submit to a Popish Prince, who will no more imitate Henry IV. in changing his religion than he will imitate those shining qualities which rendered him the honestest gentleman, the bravest captain, and the greatest prince of his age? Allow me to give a loose to my pen for a moment on this subject. General benevolence and universal charity seem to be established in the Gospel as the distinguishing badges of Christianity. How it happens I cannot tell; but so it is, that in all ages of the Church the professors of Christianity seem to have been animated by a quite contrary spirit. Whilst they were thinly scattered over the world, tolerated in some places, but established nowhere, their zeal often consumed their charity. Paganism, at that time the religion by law established, was insulted by many of them; the ceremonies were disturbed, the altars thrown down. As soon as, by the favour of Constantine, their numbers were increased, and the reins of government were put into their hands, they began to employ the secular arm, not only against different religions, but against different sects which arose in their own religion. A man may boldly affirm that more blood has been shed in the disputes between Christian and Christian than has ever been drawn from the whole body of them in the persecutions of the heathen emperors and in the conquests of the Mahometan princes. From these they have received quarter, but never from one another. The Christian religion is actually tolerated among the Mahometans, and the domes of churches and mosques arise in the same city. But it will be hard to find an example where one sect of Christians has tolerated another which it was in their power to extirpate. They have gone farther in these later ages; what was practised formerly has been taught since. Persecution has been reduced into system, and the disciples of the meek and humble Jesus have avowed a tyranny which the most barbarous conquerors never claimed. The wicked subtilty of casuists has established breach of faith with those who differ from us as a duty in opposition to faith, and murder itself has been made one of the means of salvation. I know very well that the Reformed Churches have been far from going those cruel lengths which are authorised by the doctrine as well as example of that of Rome, though Calvin put a flaming sword on the title of a French edition of his Institute, with this motto, “Je ne suis point venu mettre la paix, mais l’epée;” but I know likewise that the difference lies in the means and not in the aim of their policy. The Church of England, the most humane of all of them, would root out every other religion if it was in her power. She would not hang and burn; her measures would be milder, and therefore, perhaps, more effectual.

Since, then, there is this inveterate rancour among Christians, can anything be more absurd than for those of one persuasion to trust the supreme power, or any part of it, to those of another? Particularly must it not be reputed madness in those of our religion to trust themselves in the hands of Roman Catholics? Must it not be reputed impudence in a Roman Catholic to expect that we should? he who looks upon us as heretics, as men in rebellion against a lawful—nay, a divine—authority, and whom it is, therefore, meritorious by all sorts of ways to reduce to obedience? There are many, I know, amongst them who think more generously, and whose morals are not corrupted by that which is called religion; but this is the spirit of the priesthood, in whose scale that scrap of a parable, “Compel them to come in,” which they apply as they please, outweighs the whole Decalogue. This will be the spirit of every man who is bigot enough to be under their direction; and so much is sufficient for my present purpose.

During your last Session of Parliament it was expected that the Whigs would attempt to repeal the Occasional Bill. The same jealousy continues; there is, perhaps, foundation for it. Give me leave to ask you upon what principle we argued for making this law, and upon what principle you must argue against the repeal of it. I have mentioned the principle in the beginning of this discourse. No man ought to be trusted with any share of power under a Government who must, to act consistently with himself, endeavour the destruction of that very Government. Shall this proposition pass for true when it is applied to keep a Presbyterian from being mayor of a corporation, and shall it become false when it is applied to keep a Papist from being king? The proposition is equally true in both cases; but the argument drawn from it is just so much stronger in the latter than in the former case, as the mischiefs which may result from the power and influence of a king are greater than those which can be wrought by a magistrate of the lowest order. This seems to my apprehension to be _argumentum ad hominem_, and I do not see by what happy distinction a Jacobite Tory could elude the force of it.