for as to us, we saw nothing after the peace but increase of mortification and nearer approaches to ruin.  Not a step was made towards completing the settlement of Europe, which the treaties of Utrecht and Radstadt left imperfect; towards fortifying and establishing the Tory party; towards securing those who had been the principal actors in this administration against future events.  We had proceeded in a confidence that these things should immediately follow the conclusion of the peace:  he had never, I dare swear, entertained a thought concerning them.  As soon as the last hand was given to the fortune of his family, he abandoned his mistress, his friends, and his party, who had borne him so many years on their shoulders:  and I was present when this want of faith was reproached him in the plainest and strongest terms by one of the honestest men in Britain, and before some of the most considerable Tories.  Even his impudence failed him on this occasion:  he did not so much as attempt an excuse.

He could not keep his word which he had given the Pretender and his adherents, because he had formed no party to support him in such a design.  He was sure of having the Whigs against him if he made the attempt, and he was not sure of having the Tories for him.

In this state of confusion and distress, to which he had reduced himself and us, you remember the part he acted.  He was the spy of the Whigs, and voted with us in the morning against those very questions which he had penned the night before with Walpole and others.  He kept his post on terms which no man but he would have held it on, neither submitting to the Queen, nor complying with his friends.  He would not, or he could not, act with us; and he resolved that we should not act without him as long as he could hinder it.  The Queen’s health was very precarious, and at her death he hoped by these means to deliver us up, bound as it were hand and foot, to our adversaries.  On the foundation of this merit he flattered himself that he had gained some of the Whigs, and softened at least the rest of the party to him.  By his secret negotiations at Hanover, he took it for granted that he was not only reconciled to that Court, but that he should, under his present Majesty’s reign, have as much credit as he had enjoyed under that of the Queen.  He was weak enough to boast of this, and to promise his good offices voluntarily to several:  for no man was weak enough to think them worth being solicited.  In a word, you must have heard that he answered to Lord Dartmouth and to Mr. Bromley, that one should keep the Privy Seal, and the other the seals of Secretary; and that Lord Cowper makes no scruple of telling how he came to offer him the seals of Chancellor.  When the King arrived, he went to Greenwich with an affectation of pomp and of favour.  Against his suspicious character, he was once in his life the bubble of his credulity; and this delusion betrayed him into a punishment more severe in my sense than