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?