Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr Pope | Page 5

and to brand me for a knave. But
then I had deserved this abundantly at their hands, according to the
notions of party-justice. The Tories have not indeed impeached nor
attainted me; but they have done, and are still doing something very
like to that which I took worse of the Whigs than the impeachment and
attainder: and this, after I have shown an inviolable attachment to the
service, and almost an implicit obedience to the will of the party; when
I am actually an outlaw, deprived of my honours, stripped of my
fortune, and cut off from my family and my country, for their sakes.
Some of the persons who have seen me here, and with whom I have
had the pleasure to talk of you, may, perhaps, have told you that, far
from being oppressed by that storm of misfortunes in which I have
been tossed of late, I bear up against it with firmness enough, and even
with alacrity. It is true, I do so; but it is true likewise that the last burst
of the cloud has gone near to overwhelm me. From our enemies we
expect evil treatment of every sort, we are prepared for it, we are
animated by it, and we sometimes triumph in it; but when our friends
abandon us, when they wound us, and when they take, to do this, an
occasion where we stand the most in need of their support, and have the
best title to it, the firmest mind finds it hard to resist.
Nothing kept up my spirits when I was first reduced to the very
circumstances I now describe so much as the consideration of the
delusions under which I knew that the Tories lay, and the hopes I
entertained of being able soon to open their eyes, and to justify my

conduct. I expected that friendship, or, if that principle failed, curiosity
at least, would move the party to send over some person from whose
report they might have both sides of the question laid before them.
Though this expectation be founded in reason, and you want to be
informed at least as much as I do to be justified, yet I have hitherto
flattered myself with it in vain. To repair this misfortune, therefore, as
far as lies in my power, I resolve to put into writing the sum of what I
should have said in that case. These papers shall lie by me till time and
accidents produce some occasion of communicating them to you. The
true occasion of doing it with advantage to the party will probably be
lost; but they will remain a monument of my justification to posterity.
At worst, if even this fails me, I am sure of one satisfaction in writing
them: the satisfaction of unburdening my mind to a friend, and of
stating before an equitable judge the account, as I apprehend it to stand,
between the Tories and myself--"Quantum humano consilio efficere
potui, circumspectis rebus meis omnibus, rationibusque subductis,
summam feci cogitationum mearum omnium, quam tibi, si potero,
breviter exponam."
It is necessary to my design that I call to your mind the state of affairs
in Britain from the latter part of the year 1710 to the beginning of the
year 1715, about which time we parted. I go no farther back because
the part which I acted before that time, in the first essays I made in
public affairs, was the part of a Tory, and so far of a piece with that
which I acted afterwards. Besides, the things which preceded this space
of time had no immediate influence on those which happened since that
time, whereas the strange events which we have seen fall out in the
king's reign were owing in a great measure to what was done, or
neglected to be done, in the last four years of the queen's. The memory
of these events being fresh, I shall dwell as little as possible upon them;
it will be sufficient that I make a rough sketch of the face of the Court,
and of the conduct of the several parties during that time. Your memory
will soon furnish the colours which I shall omit to lay, and finish up the
picture.
From the time at which I left Britain I had not the advantage of acting
under the eyes of the party which I served, nor of being able from time
to time to appeal to their judgment. The gross of what happened has
appeared; but the particular steps which led to those events have been

either concealed or misrepresented--concealed from the nature of them
or misrepresented by those with whom I never agreed perfectly except
in thinking that they and I were extremely unfit to continue embarked
in the same bottom